30 July 2006
Tony Blair has given a speech on the impact of the modern world on leadership to the News Corps, in Pebble Beach, California.
Read the speech
[check against delivery]
Let me first say a word about the continuing crisis in Lebanon. President Bush and I have called for an urgent cessation of hostilities and have set out what needs to be done to achieve it. If the UN Resolution is passed early next week and acted upon immediately, then that cessation can take effect. But there is one lesson I take, amongst others, from the events of the past few weeks, terrible and tragic as they have been. We knew that UNSCR 1559 was unfinished business. Syria was forced to leave Lebanon. But the other part of the resolution was ignored - ensuring that the authority of the Government of Lebanon spread throughout the country. We want a Lebanon free from militia and foreign interference. We must now get the right political framework in place to secure it.
Secondly, we have always known that without the prospect of a lasting peace between Israel and Palestine, the Middle East will remain permanently on the "at risk" register. There is agreement now in the international community on the solution: two states, both independent, both viable, both democratic. But we haven’t achieved it, nor striven hard enough to do so. We must redouble our efforts. We must resolve the immediate issue of Gaza. But once that is done, we must not relapse into waiting mode. We must ensure there is a new and sustained drive to reach a comprehensive political solution.
We need the US and the rest of the Quartet fully engaged, persistent in support of rebuilding the Palestinian Government as a partner for Israel and determined to find a way back into the negotiation of a final status agreement.
What has happened in Lebanon and Gaza will happen again unless we deal with the underlying causes of confrontation, causes that are cynically manipulated by those who want the Middle East to descend into sectarian chaos, indifferent to destruction and suffering.
The root causes of the conflict must be tackled energetically; and they must be tackled now. Nothing else will do.
However, the even deeper roots of the troubles in the Middle East reach right down into a more basic struggle: between those who want to embrace and those who resist the modern world. The fanatical, reactionary elements of the global terrorism, based on a false view of Islam, are in reality, a revolt against the modern world - its diversity, its mass culture, its belief in equality of race and gender, its openness.
And it’s about the impact of the modern world on leadership that I want to talk.
The toughest test for any leader today is the sheer scale, pace and reach of change. There is no steady state in political leadership today. Countries, like companies, are faced with upheaval, uncertainty and require constant adaptation to changing times. Globalisation is creating vast economic opportunity but with it the same amount of insecurity. Social patterns of conventional community and family life have eroded. September 11th, changed the foreign policy. Two years ago, energy policy barely featured on the G8 or EU agendas. Now it dominates both: and rightly.
In these times, caution is error; to hesitate is to lose; yet many of the decisions are acutely, finely balanced.
Most confusingly for modern politicians, many of the policy prescriptions, cross traditional left/right lines. Basic values, attitudes to the positive role of Government, social objectives - these still do divide along familiar Party lines. But on policy the cross-dressing is rampant and is a feature of modern politics that will stay. The era of tribal political leadership is over. But across a range of issues, there is no longer a neat filing of policy to the left or the right. I have introduced tough anti-social behaviour legislation in Britain because I believe it is the poorest and most vulnerable that are damaged by such behaviour. Much of the opposition came from those normally to the right of me who thought it a breach of our traditional British civil liberties.
I am attacked from the left for introducing market mechanisms into the NHS. But for me it is an issue of equality. Patient choice should not be restricted only to those who can afford to pay for their health care. And, of course, foreign policy is now creating strange bed fellows across the piece.
Indeed, around the world, a division is opening up, almost as pivotal as the traditional left and right, and that division is what I would characterise as: "open versus closed".
Take the three isms that run throughout most political debates in Europe and the US today. They’re not socialism or capitalism. They’re: protectionism, isolationism, nativism, by which I mean, to do with migration and national identity.
In each case the issue is: "open or closed". The response to globalisation can be free trade, open markets, investment in the means of competition: education, science, technology. Or it can be protectionism, tariffs, tight labour market regulation, resistance to foreign takeovers.
Countries can choose foreign policies that are engaged and activist, seeking to sort out the world’s problems; or try to avoid their problems; refrain from controversy or picking sides, isolating a nation from the pain of the hurly-burly of the world’s challenges, but also from the opportunity to shape their outcome.
And not a major country anywhere is not riven by the debate on migration: do we welcome it as infusing new blood and ideas; or do we fear it as undermining our identity?
Where leaders stand on these issues has little to do with being on the left or the right but everything to do with modern or traditional attitudes to a changing world.
I am sometimes taken to task for being too ambitious in the radical nature of the policy changes I am seeking. I always have the opposite worry: not being radical enough.
The truth is that if it is correct that the challenge of rapid change is enormous; the response has to be fundamental also. But the implications of this are very hard to follow through.
The traditional European welfare state and social model is hopelessly inadequate to meet the challenge of the modern competitive global market. Public services that are run by producer interests, indifferent to consumer preference will lose public consent for the funding of them. In the law and order debate, the nature of organised crime or social breakdown in parts of our communities, not to say the threat of global terrorism bent on mass slaughter, mean that traditional civil liberty arguments are not so much wrong, as just made for another age. Let me give one small example. I started a few years ago a DNA database for our criminal justice system and now all those convicted of certain categories of crime are put on it. Its concept was fiercely opposed. Its extension still is, and incidentally by a mixture of Conservatives, the left of the Labour Party and Lib Dems. Yet every month suspects are linked to 26 murders, 57 rapes and sexual offences and 3000 assorted more minor crimes through the database.
Mass migration requires rules. Biometric technology means that countries are increasingly insisting on biometric visas, which in turn mean biometric passports. A biometric ID card is a short step away. It is, to me at least, almost incredible that the proposal to introduce an identity register in the UK should be so extraordinarily controversial. But it is.
So the policy implications for leaders are huge; they confuse natural supporters; and, as a result, the resistance is strong. The most misunderstood speech I ever made was my Party Conference speech of 1999 about "the forces of conservatism". This was taken as an assault on Conservatives. Actually it was an assault on small "c" conservatism, resistance to change, which can be every bit as much from the left as from the right.
In this battle - "open versus closed" - those on the "open" side of the argument will meet fierce opposition. Yet the "closed" side of the argument in truth has nothing to offer a nation except the delusion that the tide of change can be turned back; or alternatively a weaker version of the same delusion, namely that hard choices can just be evaded.
Faced with leading people through this process of change, the key to winning is to embed the policy in strong values. The reason why Europe has to change the social model is not because we no longer need social justice; but because today’s world means that social justice can only be achieved through education, not regulation, through enterprise flourishing and creating wealth, not being constrained. Fairness, equality, opportunity for all - good, progressive values - can’t be achieved by old fashioned welfare systems that breed dependency or public services creaking at the joins. The values are constant; their application has to be dynamic.
My anxiety over foreign policy is not in relation to the debate about terrorism or security. I have many opponents on the subject: but complete inner-confidence in the analysis of the struggle we face. My concern is that we cannot win this struggle by military means or security measures alone, or even principally by them. We have to put our ideas up against theirs. But our cause will only triumph if people see it as based on even-handedness, on fairness, on a deep and genuine passion to help others.
I know some of my fellow leaders think I am trifle obsessed with Africa. Its true. I am. For reasons of moral purpose of course: how can we tolerate millions, literally millions, dying every year preventably from famine, conflict and disease? But also for reasons of enlightened self-interest: in this interdependent world, we are crazy if we leave a continent prey to the forces all too ready to exploit its poverty and misery by giving people an external enemy on which to vent their anger.
In this connection, I have not at all given up on the WTO trade round. After a long discussion with President Bush after our press conference on Friday, we both agreed we needed to make one final effort to re-energise the negotiation and I hope we can do so within the next few weeks.
However, my point is simply this: if we want the strong measures necessary to solve our world’s challenges, we need a strong and unifying value base from which to put forward the solutions.
It follows from this that the alliances we create are of fundamental importance. This is a world in which new powers are emerging: China, most obviously, though India and Russia too, and Brazil and Mexico. We, who are the strongest economies at present but who want benign relations with the emerging powers, need to work hard to achieve them. We should be engaged as we have been over Iran where the unity of the UNSC has been excellent. But watchful, too. I merely say, that in assessing how we proceed, the Transatlantic alliance between Europe and North America is of seminal importance. I am alarmed at the rise in anti-American sentiment in a large part of the European media. It is foolish, short-sighted, and ultimately very dangerous.
And the alliance needed is broader than Governments alone but should include wider civic society, business, individuals, faith and voluntary groups. Climate change, whose existence and damage can surely no longer be a subject of serious dispute, needs an international framework that is realistic and agreed by the international community to go beyond the Kyoto Protocol. But action in pursuit of it will only be effective if individuals, businesses and communities in each country play their part.
Which brings me to my final point about leadership. The world changes fast; the policy changes necessary to cope are hugely challenging; opposition from traditionalists is immense. In these conditions, political leaders have to back their instinct and lead. The media climate will be often be harsh. NGOs and pressure groups with single causes can be benevolent but can also exercise a kind of malign tyranny over the public debate.
For a leader, don’t let your ego be carried away by the praise or your spirit diminished by the criticism and look on each with a very searching eye. But for heaven’s sake, above all else, lead.
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