에드 데이비, 패라지와 ‘극우’ 극단주의 비난

Good afternoon conference. Something big and dangerous is happening in our country. Hundreds of thugs in black shirts and balaclavas are marching on our streets. First over then Portsmouth.

Their aim to intimidate to spread fear to stoke racism. They may call themselves patriots, but they would tear our country apart. We must not let them.

Conference, we have seen this before. Racism on Britain streets is sadly nothing new. Even though the vast majority of our fellow citizens share our values of decency, tolerance, and respect, the values that make our country great,

there has always been a small minority hellbent on destroying them. Moses fascists in the 30s, the National Front in the 70s, Nick Griffin and the BNP just two decades ago. Each time they tried to turn neighbor

against neighbor, tried to pit community against community, tried to turn our streets into battlegrounds. But we didn't let them. The British people said no. The East End stood firm on Cable Street. Lewis and Woodreen turned them back.

Voters shut the BNP out. Every generation we have these men who pretend to be patriots, who claim to speak for real Britain. And every

accept it. But something feels different this time, doesn't it conference? Because the black shirts marching today aren't doing it in isolation. They are just the most visible part. a farright threat that is extremely

wellunded, that extends well beyond the shores of our United Kingdom, that is promoted by the world's richest man, Elon Musk, with all the might of his social media platform. And yes, conference, we have to say it.

This is a far-right movement that's given oxygen and heat and fuel by politicians and parties who claim to be serious contenders to lead our country. Cynical politicians like Nigel Farage.

Not just willing but eager to fan the flames of hatred and intolerance to make himself richer to get himself into power. trying to create a nation of division and fear because that's what keeps him going.

Well, conference, that is not our country. That is not who we are. It is the worst of Trump's America. We must not let it become Faraj's Britain.

it goes beyond words. It has real consequences on our streets and in our communities. From the shameful attacks on volunteers of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to the friend of mine, a young British woman of Indian descent

who was told by reform activists that if they got into power, she and her family would have their passports taken away. And now those same activists are backed by 72 million pounds from two crypto billionaires

conference. If there was any doubt before, there can't be now. We are in the fight of our lives and it is a fight we must win.

So, no pressure, friends. But the good news is this. We're already winning. I look around the hall and I see so many councilors, so many council leaders, so many members of parliament in Westminster, Hollywood, and Cardiff Bay.

And all of you who helped get them elected were even winning in Devon, whatever you might have heard. more and more of you every year. All of us dedicated to building a united

kingdom of fairness, decency, and community. We are utterly united in condemning racism in all its forms.

But condemnation alone is not enough. We have to understand why it's happening so we can defeat it. People are fed up. They see a politics that promises change and fails to deliver. Their bills keep rising. Their

kids still can't afford a home of their own. Their loved ones still wait too long for a GP appointment. When people stop believing politics can change their lives, they get cynical, angry, and they're not wrong.

When our young people can't see a future for themselves in our communities, they stop looking and they turn to their screens instead. Screens that offer the illusion of excitement, the illusion of connection, the illusion of belonging, but screens that only deepen the sense

of emptiness and loneliness that no amount of scrolling can ever fill. Is it any wonder the populists have found something to exploit? Their whole agenda is to tear everything down. And when people are desperate for

change, tear it all down starts to sound like the only honest thing left. People feel powerless and they're looking for anyone who seems willing to tell the truth about how broken things feel. We have to understand that conference

because the fight against those forces really is the fight of our lives. It will take more than a manifesto.

values, liberal values. Hello. Now, do you have concerns that the government want to impact every area of your life? There was a time when the state did what it needed to do, took a little bit of our money from our income and provided good public services, and that was

pretty much the remit. Not anymore. or it can feel like we're living in an age of increased censorship, in two-tier policing, and this can also play into the freedoms that we have with our money. You might be worried that the government could debank you if your face

doesn't fit or you say the wrong thing. So, is there potentially a solution? I'm joined now by the founder and CEO of Tally Money, Cameron Perry. You know, we've been in a just just over 51-year experiment now with fiat currency where our monetary systems that have been at

national level haven't been anchored to anything. So there's no accountability in the number of units of currency that can be issued because there's no asset anchoring it to anything. And also the people making those decisions don't bear any consequences to their decision-

making. And so they can in arbitrarily inflate the money supply, maybe support fashionable policies that are at least fashionable in Westminster, but don't make a lot of sense to people outside of that bubble. I'm going to think of a couple off the top of my head. We need

to have a choice. We need to be able to be in something else because up until now, pretty much for all of our lives, we've had a singular state-run currency that we've relied on. Unfortunately, I feel for the last couple of decades at

And that movement can't just talk to itself. We won't win the fight of our lives by retreating to our own bubble, talking only to people who already agree with us. Just look at today's Conservative Party. Kenya Bedmok is now blocking anyone from

standing for the Conservatives who cares about human rights or climate action. Millions of decent, moderate conservative voters are getting her message and they're turning away increasingly to others. That's what happens when you only talk to yourselves.

You don't just keep people out, you drive your own people away. Real liberalism is rooted in seeing the value of every human being, not just the ones who share our appearance or our beliefs. A free society is messy. It's full of

disagreement. And as liberals, we don't erase our differences. We confront them. the way people across our country overcome their differences every day. Not by shouting past each other, but by building real human connections, person to person, neighbor to neighbor,

street by street. Because when that person you disagree with stops being just another little box on your social media feed and becomes a

life, that's when we make progress. And conference, if this all sounds eerily familiar, it should because this is exactly what our party has always been about. The community politics we practice day in day out. Real community

politics. That's the answer. Because community politics is not some cunning tactic to win a few more votes at election time. It is a year round commitment to form those human connections to be truly a part of the communities we serve. Going from doorstep to doorstep, high

street to village hall, train station to schoolgate. showing people that democracy can actually work for them. It can change their lives and their communities for the better. Not doing things to people. Not even doing things for people, but doing

things with them and giving them the power to do more for themselves. Friends, I've seen the life-changing power of community politics very close to home. We have a lot of brilliant Liberal Democrat councilors in Kingston, but there's one who I think is

especially brilliant. Some of you might know her, my wonderful wife Emily. Emily is leading Kingston's biggest

council house building program in half a century. But what makes her a brilliant Liberal isn't just the number of council homes she's building. It's how she's doing it. When Emily took over, there was already a plan to regenerate the burough's biggest council estate. But it was a

people who actually live there. It was something being done to them, not with them. So Emily said no. It's their home. They should have a say. And she insisted on an estate wide ballot. That decision was transformative.

It forced council officers and the developers to visit the estate. It forced them to actually talk to the tenants and lease holders and listen to them. Guess what? It resulted in better homes, better designed,

and the residents voted for them in big numbers. But just as important, they felt good about it. They could hardly believe someone had asked their opinion, given them a say, took power, and put it in their hands.

Our families have started moving into the first new homes, and Emily's been to see some of them. One told her something that still chokes both of us up. They said about their new flat, "We don't deserve this. We don't deserve this."

That's how hopeless the old system had made them feel. But now they're hopeful again. That, my friends, is real community politics, real liberalism.

And I am so proud to be married to someone who puts liberalism into practice for some of the most vulnerable and deprived people in my constituency. Emily, I'm so proud of you.

As I've said to you conference before, if you want one sentence that sums up what liberalism means to me, it's this. Being a liberal is about empowering the powerless and holding the already powerful to account. And it's not just councils or developers

we need to hold to account is a conference. It's the water companies polluting our rivers while paying vast sums in dividends and bonuses. The social media barons poisoning the minds of our children while stirring up division and hatred. The corrupt

politicians enriching themselves while taking everyone else for granted.

to ignore that needs to be held to account now urgently. Artificial intelligence is already changing our lives in ways we notice and ways we don't. Handled well, it could cure diseases, make work easier, unlock discoveries we can barely imagine,

but handled badly, it concentrates more power in fewer hands than at any point in human history. That is a threat not only to our country and our communities but to the future of our whole species.

Some of the very scientists and engineers building this technology are warning that super intelligent AI could and this is a direct quote kill us all. It's not science fiction. That is a live warning from the people who know. So, not just the fight of our lives, the

fight for life itself. And yet, right now, the future of this technology is being decided by a tiny number of the richest and most powerful men in California and in Beijing, racing each other with no guardrails and no one to slow them down.

conference. We would never accept that with any other existential threat and we must not accept it when it comes to AI.

Take nuclear weapons. We didn't leave the atom bomb to a few billionaires to police themselves. We built the International Atomic Energy Agency. Nations working together to control a technology that could destroy us all. And on climate change, our party

has always been at the forefront of pushing for international action, global action. We led the work in Europe, forging a historic deal that laid the

be left in the hands of a powerful few. And so it must be with AI. Now, I'm not the only person to compare AI to climate change. Donald Trump has done it, too. He says they're both hoaxes.

But Trump also says the only thing we need to protect us against AI is a smart president. I I don't know about you conference, but I feel safer already.

Can we leave it to Trump to save us all? Absolutely not. Can we leave it to Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Olman, to Elon Musk? Absolutely not. But I'm afraid the plan Andy Burnham has set out, a partnership with Trump's Department of War, doesn't come close to

meeting the scale of this threat. It only risks making us more dependent on a Trump administration in the pockets of the tech bros. So, it's up to us to rise to the challenge, friends. We need a global treaty to press pause on super

intelligent AI now before it's too late.

agency like we have for nuclear to stop anyone from developing this technology recklessly. A liberal solution because the problem is fundamentally one about power. It's too concentrated and we must break it up. But we must also pay attention to the

other half of our liberal equation. Giving people more power. not just doing things for them because the state knows best as I fear Andy Bernham may be inclined to do or leaving them to sink or swim as Kemmy Benedo and Nigel Farage are already promising to do but

empowering people by helping everyone to be the best they can be for themselves. This is the Liberal mission.

And again, it doesn't start with policies. It starts with a mindset. And I think about it most when I think about our son, John. Emily and I were told when John was small that he would spend his life in a wheelchair permanently. We were told we needed to accept it.

But we didn't. We sought out therapy that helps Jon's muscles. We learned exercises to help Jon control his own body. Emily spent 2 years painstakingly teaching Jon to crawl. I've just talked about the length Emily

goes to for her housing tenants, so you can imagine the lengths she'll go to for our son. Slowly but surely and with a lot of help, we've empowered John to hold his own weight

and to walk if aided. When we go on family walks, he rides a tricycle, and he loves it. Let me tell you this conference. Too many of our social service systems don't empower people like John. They don't have that culture.

They think care is something you do to people. But Emily and I have been incredibly fortunate. We were lucky to find therapists for John who did believe in empowering him. I'm an MP. Emily is a counselor and a lawyer. We've had a lot of support from

family and friends. But even so, we have had to fight for John every step of the way. And I know that for most people who aren't so lucky, the fight is much harder. I see them every week in my constituency surgery, like the parents fighting for the kids with special

educational needs, battling a system that's supposed to be there for them and their child, but instead it beats them down and makes them feel hopeless,

And it all starts right at the very beginning at birth. That precious miraculous moment when everything changes. Should be a time of unblenmished joy. But right now here in one of the richest countries on earth, giving birth is not

always safe. Inquiry after inquiry has found the same horrifying pattern. Mothers and babies left with lifechanging injuries or worse because of a maternity system stretched far beyond its limits. Midwives doing their best but exhausted and in

buildings that aren't fit for purpose. That shames our country and we won't accept it.

We will give mothers the onetoone care they need, make every maternity unit safe, and end this scandal once and for all.

conference. I believe Britain should be

in the world to raise a family to. But that promise cannot be realized while families are being crushed by rising bills and an economy that feels rigged against them. They cannot be powerful or free while a cost of living

crisis grinds them down every day. The young couple who did everything they were told to do, worked hard, saved what they could, and still can't get near a mortgage, still renting a flat that eats up their income. Watching the dream of owning a home drift further out of

reach. The pensioner who was scared to turn on a fan this summer, now scared to turn on the heating this winter. The people who say, "I'm working harder than ever. I managed to get a promotion and a pay rise, but somehow I'm struggling more than I was before."

And we know what has brought us to this point, don't we, conference? the terrible economic damage of the Conservatives Brexit deal backed, let's not forget it, by Nigel Farage,

a Brexit deal that put up barriers to trade, that tied up British businesses in costs and red tape, that pushed up prices on our supermarket shelves. a deal that took opportunities away from our young people, the botched Brexit deal and all the conservative chaos that

followed. But labor.