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Lord Trimble - Speech to the Nations and Regions Session at the 2008 Conservative Party Conference, Birmingham
Conservative Party Conference 2008
Nations and Regions session, 28 September 2008, keynote speech by David Trimble
Fellow Conservatives may I begin by saying what a pleasure and honour it is to be speaking to you here for the first time since I rejoined the Conservative party.
I say rejoined. Over thirty years ago, when I joined the Ulster Unionist party I also joined the Conservative party. Sadly our ways then parted. But we are all greatly encouraged by the talks Owen Paterson is conducting on our behalf with the Ulster Unionist party.
Having a session on the nations and regions is very important. It is a reminder that we truly are a unionist party.
We are the only party that campaigns actively in all parts of the United Kingdom. We will be the only party that, at the next election, will fight every seat in the Kingdom.
It is right that we be comprehensively British and that Britishness be emphasised and celebrated. But not in some gimmicky New Labour rebranding exercise with new mottos, new anthems and cringe-making slogans.
We are confident about this.
We know that this whole is greater than the sum of our parts. We can see from our own family histories that these parts have become so interwoven that it would be utterly perverse to try to cut them apart.
We are confident of our culture, our values and particularly our institutions. There is an accumulated wisdom in these institutions – in the Monarchy, in the armed services, in Parliament, in our legal system – a wisdom which many in the current government do not seem to understand.
We know our shared history and shared response over those centuries to challenges from various authoritarian and totalitarian regimes.
We know that militarily and diplomatically it is as a United Kingdom we punch above our weight in world affairs. But not with a Prime Minister who in a crisis goes into hiding while he tries to make up his mind.
A sentence from a recent obituary caught my eye. It was that of Lieutenant Commander Ian Fraser VC. He commanded a midget submarine and in 1945 he and his frogman were incredibly brave and really went out of their way in risking their lives in attacking a Japanese cruiser that was a threat to the planned British amphibious landing in Malaya. They were both awarded the Victoria Cross for disabling the Takao on 31 July 1945.
They rejoined their depot ship on 4 August. Two days later the atom bomb made their tremendous risks and achievement redundant. Malaya was retaken without the need for an assault landing, and here are the words that caught my eye.
“Fraser and Magennis were able to see the ironic side of this development.”
Service together will breed comradeship and respect. But a similar sense of irony, a similar sense of humour comes from a shared culture and is bred in the bone. Captain Ian Fraser, born in Ealing, educated in the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe and Leading Seaman Magennis from the Falls Road in Belfast shared that culture and heritage.
Understanding our shared past is probably the best way of fostering our common identity and we can also acknowledge the contribution in recent years of those who are adding new strands to this the most successful example of inclusive civic nationalism in the world.
Actually the English speaking nations are virtually unique in the world in the extent of their willingness to welcome and absorb strangers. It goes back to, if it is still permissible to use Daniel Defoe’s famous phrase, to our knowing ourselves to be “ a mongrel race”.
But as always there are problems and some see problems in devolution.
But we, as a party, do not share them. The Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly have helped Scottish and Welsh Conservatives to build support.
Devolution by giving symbolic recognition to the Welsh, Scottish and Irish identities addressed one imbalance in the Union: but it has drawn attention to what many see as another imbalance.
Now enters the Barnet formula and the West Lothian question. These are quite technical. I would be very happy to get deep into those technicalities. I think they are less of a problem than some would make them out to be.
But the public do not want the technicalities.
The key factor is the growing sense in England that the balance has become unfair: that under devolution other people are benefiting at their expense. That concern must be met.
I think the first step in addressing it which I hope the future conservative government will take will be to open up to public scrutiny the detail of the financial arrangements. That way everyone can see exactly how the block grants are made up. And where there is extra see what justification is offered for it and whether that justification stands up.
That is only the first step. The guide in going further must be fairness.
Can I also recall David Cameron’s words on this matter?
“We have not leapt on the Barnett formula bandwagon. We have not sought to exploit these matters to foster a sense of English nationalism. And we never will, because we believe in the Union we will never do anything to put it at risk.”
I add two further points.
Alex Salmond does want to harm the Union. He also wants to wind up unionists of all descriptions. He has little chance of winning an independence referendum in Scotland. But if he can generate anti-Scottishness elsewhere in the United Kingdom, he will exploit that to the SNP’s electoral advantage. It is an unworthy tactic.
Salmond is fond of pointing at the high growth and high earnings in the economy of the Republic of Ireland and suggests an SNP led Scotland could do the same.
But he should note that in Scotland the public sector accounts for over 70% of GDP. In Ireland the equivalent figure is less than half that!
Alex, we would be very interested to see your detailed plans to halve the public sector in Scotland. There might even be some people here who would like to see the public sector shrink to 34% of GDP!
Yes I know that the Northern Ireland figure is of the same order as Scotland’s and that for Wales, thought lower is still much higher than the English figure. New Labour attempts at public sector modernisation had little impact. Indeed it has to be said that Thatcherism did not really extend to these areas.
But in my time in office I and Mark Durkan, the SDLP Deputy First Minister did start a reform programme. Oh not as grandiose as that implied by Salmond. We merely hoped to achieve similar levels of efficiency as here in England. On the return to direct rule, however, Labour Ministers buried that reform programme.
We should challenge all the devolved administrations on public sector reform.
But not in a partisan manner. In all these matters we should remember that there is an overriding national interest. We should first and always think British.
The second point is that we should not want uniformity across the board. Uniformity means centralisation, bureaucratisation and inefficiency.
The conservative way means smaller administrative units, more local management and accountability, more local discretion. In short a revitalised local government.
This will be meaningless if it does not make a difference. Devolution has resulted in different decisions on some matters. So to will devolving more local discretion in England.
We must not be scared of local differences, if finance arrangements are fair and everyone is basically on same playing field. Like dealing with Barnett, this will not be easy, for within England there are huge variations in the local resources.
Like last conference we are looking forward to an election. One that cannot be postponed for much longer.
We do not take the outcome for granted. We are conscious of the scale of the problems we may inherit.
We know there will be gains. In Wales we are knocking on the door of the Welsh Assembly government.
In Scotland we have further to go, but we are confident of real progress. In votes we may beat Labour, but SNP look like garnering most of the disenchanted former labour voters. The irony is that what Scotland needs is a centre right administration. But, in many respects SNP to left of Labour.
We are the only centre right party in Scotland. We are the right party for Scotland. And Alex, our time will come.
We have the tradition of fighting everywhere, no matter what the odds. In the next election I want to see us fighting every seat in the kingdom, meaning fighting every seat in Northern Ireland as well. With the help of my former party we can do it.
And if we do it whole heartedly, the whole Kingdom will be surprised, and we will be delighted, with the results.
(28 September 2008)
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