A country I wish to defend

Note: The below was aimed at a left of centre audience.

At conference, Tony Blair gave a speech in which he laid out his vision for a Labour Goverment's third term, a set of policies which will attack the very institutions and fabric of society that I am involved in politics to defend.

Blair's vision is of a country where the most fundamental sections of our civil society - health, education, criminal justice - are torn down and remade in his own image - autocractic, selective, giving opportunity, but not equality.

He tells us that New Labour was a fundamental recasting of progressive politics, because the aspirations of the people had changed. I believe the aspirations of people are the same as they have always been - to live in a just and fair society where no-one is left behind, where the weak and the vulnerable are protected, where tyranny is opposed by the power of democracy, where all are able to live well.

These are values we can all support, but, as Blair says, the challenge we face is how we put them into practice. Blair's policies, however, do not advance these values. Rather, they attack and undermine them.

At its most basic, our philosophy boils down to a belief that the industrial and economic spheres should be run for the benefit of society, rather than society being run for the benefit of these spheres. On this most basic of tests, Blair fails.

He tells us that we cannot hope to stand against the demands of these spheres, that the best we can hope for is to try and ameliorate the effects of them on our society.

Where is the aspiration? Where is the belief in people, in society? Where is the belief in the very labour movement he purports to lead?

Blair tells us we should be "swift to adapt, slow to complain". But the labour movement should never be slow to complain, to campaign for social justice, to defend the interests of those we represent. Given the excesses of globalisation, of global capitalism, we must be prepared to do this more than ever.

We're told "the competition can't be shut out, it can only be beaten". But perhaps what we should really be doing is changing the rules of the game.

Blair accepts that "social solidarity remains the only way to secure the future" but he claims that its role "is not to resist the force of globalisation but to prepare for it". He is wrong. Globalisation is not an unstoppable force - it is a product of humanity, and it can be stopped, or altered, by humanity.

Look at the standard bearers of globalisation - the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank - these are international organisations in existance purely due to treaties between member states. Governments created these organisations, and if they are not helping humanity, then governments can change these organisations - if they have the will.

As we are told by Blair, we must reject "old-fashioned conflict". We must instead embrace new methods of fighting, bringing the labour movement together with other campaigners, charitable and environmental groups. The power of globalisation, of global capitalism, must be met by the more powerful voice of global democracy, a globalisation of people, of democracy, not money.

But to ensure we in Britain are able to take a full part in this effort, we must resist the attacks on our society proposed by Blair.

These attacks are on the collective sections of society - when collective endeavours are attacked, individualism is promoted. These attacks are couched in terms of reform of the public services. Blair is convinced that public services cannot be delivered by the civil society, by the public sphere. Don't misunderstand me, I accept that public services do need to reform. They will always need reform, as we live in an ever-changing world.

But that reform must take place within the public sphere. Our health and education systems are expressions of the desires of our society, the moral and ethical desire that those who fall ill should be cared for by society, the moral and ethical desire that every child should receive the highest standard of education. When one of us needs to learn, we will teach. When one of us stumbles, we will help them rise.

But when you bring the private sector in to deliver these services, you attack these expressions of society. When education is poor, but profits are made, you attack our desire to provide it. When mistakes are made in the NHS (and they will always be made - people are fallible) but profits are made, you attack our desire to help.

But more than this, when you take the moral and ethical expressions of our society, and allow profits to be made on them, then those profits are immoral, and unethical. And we will not pay them.

Allowing the private sector into the public sphere damages us all. It lays the foundation for the destruction of those expressions of society. When society demands these expressions are enacted, they must be delivered by society.

The creeping expansion of selection by specialist schools must be opposed. The purchasing of a child's curriculum in City Acadamies must be opposed. The slow privatisation of the NHS must be opposed.

And when it comes to criminal justice, where the state can physically intervene in our lives, we must remember the basic principles that guide us.

Blair tells us his proposals don't "mean abandoning human rights, it means deciding whose come first". Let me be clear - this is offensive and wrong. Human rights cannot be divisible in this way. You cannot decide some people are more human than others.

Yes, we must punish those who attack us. But we cannot, we must not do it summararily. It must be after the due process of law. "Allowing law-abiding people to live in safety" requires that the primary duty of the criminal justice system must be "to protect the innocent from being wrongly convicted" - otherwise none of us are safe from the state.

We share values. We share principles. And yes, we share that dirty word, an ideology. These are what guide us, what inform us, what allow us to act in a way we believe to be right.

We should resist the call to apply our values and principles differently in different times. Principles are not flexible. They cannot be relaxed when expedient. We need to remember this - remember that we hold true to our principles when our leader tells us not to. This is what it truly means to be a grown-up party - accepting that while, in the short-term, it may be easier to abandon what we believe, in the long-term we will have lost touch with who we are, with our values, with our beliefs. We will be adrift.

So I call on you, all of you, to hold firm to your principles, hold true to them in the face of this storm, and more, to fight for them. We cannot pretend to be the champions of the left, of the labour movement, of those we represent, if we shrink from the battle of ideas.

Yes, it will be hard, yes, it will be painful. But that is precisely why we must fight. If not us, who? If not you, who?