The Prime Minister has told guests at the Lord Mayor’s Banquet that the current turmoil in the world economy offers a chance to build a “new global order” based on cooperation and opportunity.
Speaking at his annual address in the City of London, the PM said that the financial crisis and a world of apparent “conflict and injustice” could also give rise to a “hard-headed and progressive” multi-lateralism within a “truly global society”. He called for renewed energy to deal with the issues of democracy and human rights, peace, climate change, financial reform and poverty.
The PM said:
“It is now in our power to come together, confer, and decide and that we must be guided by one clear truth: that we need solutions that can no longer be defined in terms of us and them, but can be achieved only together: as us with them. I believe that people do not only cooperate out of need. There is a human need to cooperate.
“And I believe also that all our efforts reflect what people find when they can communicate across continents with each other; that there is a shared moral sense that we are responsible each to the other - country to country as much as person to person. And because of this no injustice can last for ever, and even in the most desperate of circumstances people can journey with hope.”
Mr Brown summarised his approach as internationalist, interventionist and progressive, an approach he said should make the world confident for the future and make 2008 a year to be remembered not for the financial crash but for the way in which the world “endured it and prevailed”.
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