America has embraced the values of progress
The election of Obama has inspired millions around the world. It shows how voters need government to provide security in troubled times
- Gordon Brown
- guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 9 2008 00.01 GMT
- The Observer, Sunday November 9 2008
- Article history
This is a defining moment. A new chapter of the human story is being written and will be studied by our children, and their children, and their children after them. It is up to us whether 2008 is remembered for a financial crash that engulfed the world or for a new resilience and optimism from a generation which faced the economic storm head on and built the fair society in its wake.
The people of America made their choice last week. They picked a progressive President, inspiring the world with their belief that in difficult times people need their government to ensure more - not less - help and security is available for families and business. I'm looking forward to co-operating with the President-elect in building a new global society in which the advancement of people - their homes, jobs, savings and pensions - is always put first.
Today we are seeing not just the collapse of failed institutions but the collapse of a failed laissez-faire dogma. In this first financial crisis of the global age the old free market fundamentalism, no matter how it is dressed up, has been found wanting. These aren't abstract questions of political theory but woven into the stuff of everyday life. It's a question of how we ensure people get a fair chance and a fair say in life and how we make sure everybody, including banks, abides by rules. It's about what should be done to make sure that people's Christmas savings are safe, about how people can keep the homes they've worked to hard to buy.
That's the conversation that people all over Britain will be having around their kitchen tables tonight, so let me tell you my take. Our government is pro business; I believe in markets, entrepreneurship and there are many areas of the economy that need the spur of more competition.
But the events of the past months bear witness, more than anything in my lifetime, to one simple truth: markets need morals. 'Greed is good' is no prescription for the good society, but neither is it the mark of a good economy. It is the progressive values - rewarding hard work, co-operation, responsibility while penalising excess and reckless risk-taking - which will ensure our market economy works efficiently and fairly.
No country can stop the world slowdown, but it's only progressive governments - in Britain a Labour government - that will take decisive action to safeguard people on middle and modest incomes. While the very privileged can look after themselves in times like these, the rest of us need to know we're not on our own.
That's why this government has acted to protect homeowners from repossessions, is negotiating £4bn to tide small businesses over and has introduced an energy package, including higher winter fuel allowances for the elderly. It's also because we care about fairness that Labour has taken action to save banks. We haven't done that to help the bankers, but to help people like you who put away your savings in the bank, or need a loan to buy a house or start a business. We've done our bit, so we're determined the banks will do theirs. Banks must now not only cut mortgage rates but start lending again. All banks getting public money need to pass some tough hurdles - such as not rewarding the executives who got them into this mess and not paying cash bonuses this year to people sitting on the boards of banks we are supporting.
Countries and continents - all of us - are making painful transitions. But beyond this transition will emerge an opportunity-rich global economy for those countries best equipped to prosper. So getting people through the downturn fairly is the most pressing progressive priority. But there is another, deeper way in which progressive values have truly come of age. We have a choice about whether the global interdependence of this new economic era is a force for justice or the driver of even greater social inequality. One billion skilled jobs will be created around the world in the next two decades and that offers boundless opportunities for those who acquire the right skills to climb as far and as fast as their talents will take them.
When the experts talk about 'social mobility' they mean the universal human instinct - the longing that our children can have a better life than ours and than our parents had before us. That's what this new global economy offers, but only with an energetic progressive government committed to unlocking all of the talent of all of the people.
Winning the global race to the top will require British firms to move up the value chain - to focus on niche products, high technology services, custom-built goods and specialist green products and services. That means we should not slow down our plans to double investment in science and continue Labour's high levels of investment in quality education. But it also means we must be more ambitious still - building green companies and green jobs as we make the transition to a low-carbon economy; and expanding private and public investment in the new technological infrastructure of the 21st century as the modern equivalent of the new deal investments made in roads and bridges in the 20th century.
We are in tough times and of course the fairer future is not certain. But the lesson from recent times and now from the Obama victory - whether it be on financial instability, the creation of jobs, or climate change - is that only progressive answers, clear public purpose working for the benefit of all, can meet the big challenges we face.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/09/barack-obama-gordon-brown