年会英语演讲稿(6篇范文)

第1篇 伦敦市长鲍里斯·约翰逊在2019英国保守*年会英语演讲稿

good morning everyone. good god …good morning everybody, thank you very much.please, please take your seats,we’ve got a lot to get through. good morning everybody inmanchester, it’s agreat joy to be back here. not so long ago my friends i…we welcome all sortsofwonderful luminaries to city hall but not so long ago i welcomed the formerfrench primeminister, monsieur alain juppe to my office in city hall and hecruised in with his sizeableretinue of very distinguished fellows with theirlegion d’honneur floret and all the rest of it andwe shook hands and had atête a tête and he told me that he was now the mayor of bordeaux. ithink hemay have been mayor of bordeaux when he was prime minister, it’s the kind ofthingthey do in france – a very good idea in my view. joke, joke, joke! andwhat he said … joke! hesaid that he had the honour of representing, he had239,517 people in bordeaux and thereforehe had the honour of representing the9th biggest city in france. i got the ball back very firmlyover the net,folks, because i said there were 250,000 french men and women in londonandtherefore i was the mayor of the 6th biggest french city on earth.

i can’t remember exactly what hesaid then, i think he said something like ‘tiens!’ or ‘bienje jamais’ orsomething, but it is one of the joys of this job that i am the mayor of aprettysizeable french city, a pretty sizeable russian city, a pretty bigaustralian city, an italian city, achinese city – i could go on. that is agreat thing about london, it’s a good thing for ourcountry because thatforeign money brings jobs and it fills our restaurants and it puts bums ontheseats of our theatres, helps finance our universities very considerably and itenables londondevelopers, some of whom i see in this great audience, to embarkon project that otherwisewould be stalled. am i right? yes. and it brings abuzz of excitement to the city which also ofcourse attracts investors and yet wehave to recognise that the sheer global charisma oflondon is putting pressureon londoners, with average house prices in our city now six timesaverageearnings and for the bottom 25% of earners, the house prices in the bottomquarter arenine times their earnings.

the pressure is really growingand it is intensifying thanks to an entirely home grownphenomenon to which ialluded at the end of the olympic and paralympic games which tookplace lastyear because you may dimly remember that i prophesied that the athletes thatteamgp and paralympics gb had so moved the people of this country to suchparoxysms ofexcitement, i think i said, on the sofas of britain that they hadnot only inspired a generationbut probably helped to create one as well and likeall my predictions and promises as your mayoror as the mayor of many of youhere, i have delivered mes amis, in that gla economics now saythat live birthsin london this year will be 136,942 which is more than in any year since1966when england won the world cup – and the prime minister was born i think.

i look around this audience –that means the population is growing very fast and it is goingto hit ninemillion by 2020, possibly ten million by 2031 and i notice when i point thisout topeople that they start to look a bit worn. they’re the older generationand think, all these otherpeople’s children, what jobs are they going to do,where are they going to live and will they bestepping on my toes on the tube?i want to reassure you first of all that london has been herebefore, we hadnine million in 1911, i think we had nine million in 1939 and the second thing–for once i actually brought it with me thank goodness – the second thing isthat we have a plan.here it is, the 2020 vision, and it will ensure that wecreate a city in which no child is left behindor shut out and everybody has achance to make of their lives what they can.

step number one – and i seriouslycommend this document, it is entirely free on the glawebsite, written entirelyby me as well – step number one is to build more homes as i say. can ijust askthis audience, how many of you today here in manchester are lucky enough to beowneroccupiers? can i ask for a show of hands, is anybody here an owneroccupier? look, here we go.who is an owner occupier? there is no disgrace inthat, we believe in the property owningdemocracy and all that kind of thingbut we have to face the reality that for many, manymillions of people, foryoung people in london, for many members of our families, it is nowabsolutelyimpossible to get anywhere near to affording a home and that’s why it isabsolutelyvital that we get on with our programmes of accelerating housebuilding. we have done about55,000 – rick, how many have we done so far? 55,000so far, give or take it will be around100,000 over two terms.

we’ve put £3.6 billion of publicland to the use of so many of the good developers i seearound here, since maylast year when i was elected by the way, but we need to do more and weneed toaccelerate our programme of house building dramatically and i think that it istime thatwe considered allowing companies to make tax-free loans to theiremployees to help them withthe cost of their rent deposit – how about that?brainy policy, no, put in for the budgetconsiderations. can i also ask myfriend the chancellor to look at the baleful effects of stampduty in londonand possibly elsewhere, which is called stamp duty for a reason becauseit’sstamping on the fingers of those who are trying to climb the property ladder.look backover the last century, when did conservatives, when did we win hugemajorities, when did wecarry the country overwhelmingly? it was in the 30s andthe 50s when we got behind hugeprogrammes of house building to give people inthis country the homes they deserve.

to make those homes possible ofcourse you have got to get on with putting in thetransport links, as i nevertire of telling you and we’ve not only cut delays by 40%, comrades,in londonsince i was elected, we have expanded the capacity of the jubilee line by 25%,thevictoria line is now running at incredible 34 trains an hour – how many isthat per minute? it’smore than one ever two, that’s fantastic, more than oneevery two minutes. there’s no flies onthese guys! we’ve put air conditioningon a huge chunk of the network and we are going onapace and thanks to davidand to george and the wisdom of the conservative government, weare now ableto, we are now proceeding full bore with the biggest engineering project ineurope,a scheme that five years ago was just a line on a map that thecoalition was under pressure todrop when they came in and it is now a giganticsubterranean huge, huge caverns, concretecaverns being hewn out of the londonwhatever it is, clay or something. i should know that. aswe speak, as wespeak, beneath the streets of london are six colossal boring machinescalledada and phyllis and mary and elizabeth and victoria i think, i have got theirnames wrong,i can’t remember their names but they all have female names forsome reason and phyllis andada are coming in from the west and mary andelizabeth are going from the east, from thelimmo peninsula and they arechomping remorselessly through the london clay and they aregoing to meet somewherearound whitechapel for this ginormous convocation of worms – i don’tknow whatthey’ll do but it will absolutely terrific because the rail capacity of londonwill beincreased by 10% and we will have done cross rail, i confidentlypredict, as we did theolympics, on time and on budget. a fantastic example ofwhat this country can do and acalling card that british business is now usingaround the world.

in my view and in the view ofthose who are now working on cross rail, what we should do isuse those worldclass skills that we’ve been accumulating in london, to get going beforewedisband them on the next set of projects. i mean obviously cross rail 2, highspeed rail, newpower stations, solutions to our aviation capacity problem, sothat we have a logicalsequential infrastructure plan for our country and don’tdo what previous governments havedone and that is waste billions by stoppingand starting. i think we can do it, i am absolutelyconfident that we can doit. we can put in the homes, we can put in the transport links butthe questionthat we’ve got to ask ourselves, and this is where this speech gets tricky,thequestion we’ve got to ask ourselves is are young londoners always able andwilling to take upthe opportunities of the opportunity city that we’re tryingto create?

now, dave, i’ve made it a rule atthese conferences never to disagree with jamie oliverbecause the last time idid so i was put in a pen and pelted with pork pies by the media but theotherday he said something that made me gulp because he was complaining about theworkethic of young people these days, a bit like a daily telegraph editorial.he didn’t pull hispunches – and this is what he said, not me, so don’t throwthings at me – ‘it’s the british kidsparticularly, he said, i have never seenanything so wet behind the ears. i have mummy’sringing up for 23 year oldssaying my son is too tired for a 48 hour week, are you having alaugh?’ thecelebrity chef told good housekeeping. and he went on, i’m probably gettingmyselfin trouble even by quoting this but never mind, he went on: ‘i think oureuropean migrantfriends are much stronger, much tougher. if we didn’t haveany, all of our restaurants wouldclose tomorrow. there wouldn’t be any britsto replace them.’

now i can see looks of apoplectic… well, no i can’t really. where’s the apoplexy? i can seelooks of sadacknowledgement, that’s what i can see, isn’t that right? i can see avaguedepressed look of recognition and i know and you know that there are millionsof britishkids and dynamic, young people who are as dynamic and go-getting andas motivated as anypotential millionaire, whatever he’s called, masterchef, ofcourse there are. but my question toyou is, what if jamie has a point? what ifhe has half a point or even a quarter of a point? doyou think he does? half apoint, quarter of a point? he’s on to something. he may have phrasedit in aprovocative way but he was saying something that i think resonates, right?okay, i’mgetting through this with difficulty.

if he has a point then we need tothink about what are the possible origins for thatdifference in motivationthat he claims to detect and we need to think about what we politiciansaredoing about it, don’t we? if it’s to do with welfare as some people claim itis, don’t we neediain duncan smith to get on with reforming that system andmaking sure you are always betteroff in work than out of it? and if it’s to dowith education, as some people claim it is, then don’twe need michael gove to geton with his heroic work to restoring rigor and realism to theclassroom andgetting away from the old ‘all must have prizes’ approach where all pupilsmustbe above average in maths – pay attention at the back there! – which is notpossible. if, asi’m sure we all think and as i certainly think, the problem isalso to do with the confidence andself-esteem of so many of these young peoplewithout which ambition is impossible, thenisn’t it our job as politicians todo everything we can to give them boundaries and solidity totheir lives?

that’s why i have spent a lot ofmy time as mayor on projects like the mayor’s fund forlondon and team londonand encouraging volunteers to read to kids across our city andmentoringprogrammes which we are expanding and the support of the uniformed groups,thescouts, the guides, all those kinds of fantastic organisations, bringingsporting facilities toschools that don’t have any, mobile pools we’ve beensending around london, beautiful glorifiedsheep dips we send round, they loveit. they work brilliantly well and we’re helping to gettalented youngmusicians to cross that barrier that they confront when they reach the ageofeleven and have to go through into secondary school and so many of them give uptheirinstruments and it’s a real, real tragedy and we are setting up funds tohelp with creation ofexcellence in our schools and to improve standards allround, to support the work that michaelgove is doing.

it’s when i look at the hugerange of projects that we’re engaged in now at city halltogether withhundreds, if not thousands of other projects, many of which are supportedbypeople in this room, i do think we are making a difference to the lives ofthose young peopleand we have got loads of them into apprenticeships, about118,000 over the last couple of years,we’re going to get on to 250,000 by 2019and thanks to the police, thanks very largely to theirwork, we are seeingsignificant falls in crime as jane was just saying. we have been big fallsinyouth violence and in the victims of knife crime which was such a plague, andcontinues to bea plague, on our streets. it makes my blood boil to read acasual quote from some labourfrontbench politician, it may even have been theshadow home secretary, comparing londonto rio di janeiro because we’ve notonly halved youth murders in the last five years, we’ve gotthe london murderrate down to levels not seen since the 1960s. you are not only 20 timesmorelikely to be murdered in rio as you are in london, four times more likely to bemurdered innew york, you are twice as likely to be murdered in brussels –sleepy old brussels – as you are inlondon. presumably with lobster picks.

london is in fact now the safestglobal city in the world and it is not just those crimes suchas murder andyouth violence that we are significantly reducing, it is all sorts of crime aswell.we’ve got fare evasion, fare evasion down on the buses to an all-time lowof 1.1%, whatever1.1% means, mainly thanks to getting rid of the bendy buses.that i think is the way forward.you’ve got to tackle that complex of problems,crime well frozen, educationalunderachievement and you’ve got to make surethat kids growing up in london are able to takeopportunity that our cityoffers and at the same time we must make sure they don’t dismisssome jobs asquote/unquote ‘menial’, which is a word i sometimes hear, and that theyseethem, those jobs that london creates in such abundance, in the same way thatjamieoliver’s east europeans see those jobs, as stepping stones, as abeginning to a life in work thatcan take them anywhere.

now i’m conscious today that i amspeaking very frankly about this issue, i have probablygot myself as usualinto trouble, that’s my job, because i think there is a vast and latentgeniusin these young people and if we could harness their talents more effectivelythen theywould not only have fulfilling lives but we could drive even fasterthe great flywheel of thelondon economy that is now the most diverse in europeand we not only lead the world as thefinancial centre, artistic centre,cultural centre, we now have, we now have the biggest textsector anywhere ineurope, we have a growing ned city of academic health scienceinstitutionsalong the euston road and in ten years, in the next ten years it is forecastthatlondon’s media industry will produce more film and tv content than eithernew york or losangeles. i can scarcely believe that but that’s what i amassured. that is an extraordinarychange that is taking place in the londoneconomy and it is this prodigious, pulsating demandof london that helps todrive the rest of the country.

the eu commission has just done astudy about competitiveness of regions in europe,have you all read it? youshould read it, you’re in it folks. they have discovered, they havedetermined,the eu commission – and i dare not dissent – has concluded that surrey andwestand east sussex – anybody here from surrey and west and east sussex? well done,welldone surrey and west and east sussex, you belong to the fifth mostcompetitive region ineurope. they have looked at berkshire, buckinghamshireand oxfordshire – anybody here fromberkshire, buckinghamshire and oxfordshire?well done, prime minister, well done,congratulations, you belong to the thirdmost competitive region in europe, well done. and whyare those regions sofizzing with competitiveness according to the eu commission? becauselondon isthe most competitive city in the whole of europe and it drives jobs across theuk andnot just in the south-east.

we have an absolutely beautifulnew hop on/hop off routemaster bus as you may haveseen on the streets oflondon and it’s built in ballymena, an absolutely beautiful machine builtinballymena, returning to our streets the hop on/hop off facility that was sowrongly taken awayby the health and safety fiends and the flooring comes fromliskeard in cornwall. yesterday iwas at a factory in middleton, greatermanchester, where they are making the destinationblinds with a beautiful 2019year old chinese silk-screening technique, the destination blindsfor our newlondon bus. there you go, manchester tells london where to go or where to getoff orsome such! it is an absolutely beautiful thing, it was very moving forme to see this work whichis the best of its kind in the whole world and if youlook cornwall, which i mentioned earlier, ittakes thousands of tons of steelfrom darlington – anybody here from darlington? frommiddleton? come on folks,from oldham? well there we go. cranes from derbyshire…[cheer]there you go!newcastle? bridges, bridges from shropshire, anybody from shropshire here?welldone, we love your bridges. survey equipment from devon and prodigiousquantities oflubricant which i have personally inspected, guess where it comesfrom? bournemouth.bournemouth, isn’t that fantastic. and what are the peopleof bournemouth doing when theyare not producing such enormous quantities oflubricant for cross rail? shall i tell you whatthey are doing? i’ll tell you.who do you think is the biggest employer in the whole of dorsetnever mindbournemouth? who is the biggest employer in the whole of dorset, you knowthisone – excluding the nhs which is still pretty big – do you know who it is?insurance is veryclose, it’s the right idea, it is j.p. morgan mes amis. j.p.morgan. if there wasn’t a strongbanking sector in london then there would beno strong banking sector in edinburgh and therecertainly wouldn’t be one indorset.

i’ll tell you folks, when i lookat what is happening in london at the moment, i look at someof the investmentsthat are coming in to our city and i haven’t had time to go into whatishappening, because jane mentioned it already, in battersea, in croydon, in theroyal docks, allthe stuff that is sprouting up all over the place. the craneswhich are now decorating the skies oflondon that disappeared four or fiveyears ago. when i see what’s happening i must say that ishare the optimism andthe excitement of george osborne completely, i thought he gave abrilliantspeech yesterday but i also, i also share his realism, his realism and hisdetermination toremove the remaining barriers to competitiveness in ourcountry and what is the greatestbarrier to competitiveness folks, for londonand indeed for britain? what is it? not visas,much worse than visas. what isthe greatest threat we face, come on folks, pay attention. alabour government,correct.

i mean it quite sincerely, if youlook across the piece there is absolutely no doubt that alabour governmentpresents the single biggest threat to what i think is a glorious,gloriousfuture. do we want to go back to all that again? do we want to put them back onthebridge when they ran the ship aground? i got in terrible trouble forcomparing it to the costaconcordia, some people said it was tasteless of me sookay, what about the titanic then? is thatbetter? is that more acceptable?

we don’t want to go back to thehigh tax, high spend approach of ed miliband whoemanated from the bowels ofthe trade union movement like his party, we want to go forwardwith a low taxenterprise equality. we don’t want a mansion tax do we? no, we don’t becauseitwould inhibit the very homes programme that we need to get going and we want tobuild, as isay, hundreds of thousands of more homes. we don’t want to go backnever mind to the age ofold labour, we don’t want to go back to the age ofdiocletian, emperor diocletian that is, withsome crazed attempt atgovernmental price fixing, which is what ed miliband came up with lastweek, wewant to go forward with a serious programme of new power station building and,for mymoney, with fracking, why not, absolutely, let’s get going.

we must not go back to the oldfailed labour idea of a third runway at heathrow. you knew iwas going to saythis but i’m going to say it, a third runway at heathrow aggravatingnoisepollution in what is already the city in the world worst affected by noisepollution by miles.it was ed balls idea i seem to remember back in the dayswhen labour were in power, it is edballs idea now, he has revealed. it wasballs then, it’s balls now and it is not good enough forthis country, it isn’tthe right answer for the most beautiful and liveable city on earth.

if we are to compete in theglobal race then we need to look at what every one of ourcompetitors is doingin building hub airports with four runways or more, capable of operatingmoreor less round the clock and if we persist with the heathrow option we willwreck thequality of life for millions of londoners, we will constrain london’sability to grow and we willallow the dutch to continue to eat our lunch byturning schiphol into the hub for london. thankyou.

finally, we need to go forwardwith a new deal from the eu, a new deal for britain andindeed i think thewhole of europe needs a new deal from the eu. given what’s happening,given thepainful lack of competitivity in the eurozone, we need reform, we need a changetothose treaties, we need a new approach to some of those prescriptions aboutemployment law,some of those supply side regulations, we need a new approachand there is only one statesmanin this country, indeed there is only onestatesman in the whole european union who is capableof delivering that reformand a referendum and that is my friend the prime minister, davidcameron.

it’s true, absolutely true. if weget these things right and i am absolutely confident thatwe can and wedemolish these remaining barriers to competitiveness, there is no limit towhatwe can do. i saw the other day some geezer from the kremlin said somethingabout thiscountry that was even less polite than what jamie oliver had to say.he said that britain was asmall island that no one paid any attention toexcept oligarchs who bought chelsea. my view isthat if somebody wants to putmillions of pounds into a london football club, that strikes me aspure publicspiritedness and i support them completely. i don’t want to risk polonium inmysushi by bandying statistics with the kremlin about per capital gdp or lifeexpectancy exceptto say that the uk of course vastly exceeds russia in both.

the serious point is that thisalleged spokesman underestimates where our country, the uk,is going and whatit can do. if you look at the demographics and the knowledge base andindeedthe manufacturing industries, if you look at what is happening with tata, inwhich thiscountry excels, then there is every chance in our lifetimes and imean to live a very, very longtime, that the uk – mark what i say – the ukcould be the biggest country in the eu both inpopulation and in output. thathad you, it’s true. scary thought. the reason so many russianscome here isthat they recognise that london is not simply the capital of britain but alsoof theeu and in many ways, of the world. a city with more american banks in itthan there are in newyork for heaven’s sake. a 24 hour city in which there are100,000 people working in supplying usall with coffee in the coffee bars oflondon, how about that? we have more baristas thanbarristers, there are quitea few barristers as well, and yet with so much green space in londonthat weproduce two million cucumbers a year from london. eat your heart out, vladimirputin. itis partly thanks to our cucumber yields, our staggering cucumberyields, comrades, that londonnow contributes almost 25% of uk gdp, which ismore than the city has contributed at any timesince the romans founded it.

in the next couple of yearsobviously we need to take all sorts of crucial decisions about howto ensurethe harmonious development of that city and i want those decisions to be takenbyconservatives. the choice at the next election is very simple – it’s betweenthe fool’s gold oflabour gimmicks which we all understand, we’ve all fought beforeand a government that iswilling to take tough and sensible decisions, to cutunnecessary spending but to make the keyinvestments in transport andinfrastructure and housing and in our communities that will takethis countryforward. i know what i want as mayor of the greatest city on earth, i think iknowwhat you want, am i right? i know that we can do it so let’s go for itover the next two years.cut that yellow liberal democrat albatross from aroundour necks and let it plop into the sea, letit plop into the sea by workingflat out for david cameron as prime minister and an outrightconservativevictory in 2019. thank you very much, thank you everybody.

第2篇 英国工*领袖埃德·米利班德在2019年工*年会英语演讲稿

it’s great to be in brighton. andi want to start by thanking somebody from the bottom ofmy heart for thekindest of words. not justine …oh, i would like to thank her, a round ofapplausefor justine please, ladies and gentlemen. not my mum … but a womancalled ella philips. it waslocal election day, ella rode past me on her bike,she fell off …it’s not funny! i helped her upand afterwards she called mesomething i had never been called before: she said i was an“action hero”. whyare you laughing? she said i was an action hero “who mysteriously appearedoutof nowhere”. and she said, “what added to all the confusion was that ed wasactuallyattractive and not geeky at all”. i promise you, she did say that. shesaid, “even the way heappeared was suave”. i don’t know why you find this sofunny, friends. “he was dressed casually,but he had style”. sounds quite me,doesn’t it? now i was pretty pleased with this, as you cantell, until somethingdawned on me: ella was concussed. she was badly concussed. in fact, sheherselfsaid, “i was seeing things because i was still in quite a daze”. well, ella,you are notkidding. but let me say, ella, if you are watching today, thankyou, you have made my year.

i want to start today with thesimplest of thoughts. an idea that has inspired change forgenerations. thebelief that helped drive us out of the second world war and into thatgreatreforming government of 1945. an ambition that is more important now than ithas beenfor decades. an emotion that is felt across our country at kitchentables every night. a feelingthat is so threatening to those who want to keepthings as they are. words that are so basicand yet so powerful, so modest andyet so hard to believe. six simple words that say: britaincan do better thanthis. britain can do better than this; we are britain, we are better thanthis.are you satisfied with a country where people are working for longer for less,year afteryear? are you satisfied with a country divided losing touch with thethings we value the most?are you satisfied with a country that shuts out thevoices of millions of ordinary people andlistens only to the powerful? are yousatisfied with a country standing apart as two nations? welli am notsatisfied. we are britain, we are better than this. and we have to rebuild anewonenation. an economy built on your success, a society based on your values, apolitics that hearsyour voice – rich and poor alike – accepting their responsibilitiestop each other. one nation, weare going to make it happen, and today i amgoing to tell you how.

i want to start with leadership.leadership is about risks and difficult decisions. it is aboutthose lonelymoments when you have to peer deep into your soul. i ran for the leadership ofthisparty, it was really hard for my family, but i believed that labour neededto turn the page and iwas the best person to do it. i when i became leader ifaced a decision about whether weshould stand up to rupert murdoch. it wasn’tthe way things had been done in the past, but itwas the right thing to do so idid it. and together we faced them down. and then the otherweek i faced aneven bigger decision about whether the country should go to war. thebiggestdecision any leader faces, the biggest decision any parliament faces, thebiggestdecision any party faces. all of us were horrified by the appallingchemical weapons attacks insyria, but when i stood on the stage three yearsago, when i became your leader, i said wewould learn the lessons of iraq. itwould have been a rush to war, it wasn’t the right thing forour country. so isaid no. it was the right thing to do. you see, the real test of leadership isnotwhether you stand up to the weak, that’s easy; it’s whether you stand up tothe strong andknow who to fight for. and you know i am reminded of a storyback when i was starting out,standing to be an mp in doncaster, with a womancalled molly roberts. molly was in herseventies, and there i was candidlytrying to get her vote, sitting in her front from sipping amug of tea. and shesaid to me, “how can you, who weren’t brought up in this area,possiblyunderstand the lives of people here, their hopes and their struggles?” it wasthe rightquestion, and here is the answer. for me it lies in the values i wasbrought up with. you see inmy house it was my mum that taught me these values.about the importance of reaching out alistening to people, of understandingtheir hopes and their struggles. she is the most patient,generous person ihave met in my whole life. and she taught me never to be contemptuousofothers, never to be dismissive of their struggle. now she was teaching me alesson of life. andsome people will say, ah yeah but you have to leave decencybehind when it comes to politics.well i say they are wrong, because only ifyou reach out and listen can you do the mostimportant thing a leader can do,the most important qualification in my view for being primeminister. only thenwill you have the ability to walk in the shoes of others and know who tofightfor, whoever your opponent, however powerful they are, guided by the only thingthatmatters: your sense of what is right. this is what i believe, this iswhere i stand, this is theleadership britain needs.

and when i think about who weneed to fight for i think about all the people i have met overthe last year. ithink of the people britain and their enormous and extraordinary spirit. ithinkof our troops, serving so bravely all around the world. let us paytribute to them today. youknow i have seen in afghanistan those young men andwomen, young men and women who areyoung enough to be my son or daughterserving our country, and it is a truly humblingexperience. and the events of thelast few days in kenya remind us of the importance of beingever-vigilantagainst terrorism at home and around the world. i think of the brave menandwomen of our police force, who serve with so little credit each and every dayfor our country.let us thank them for what they do. and then i think of allthe people i have met over the lastyear. during the local election campaign idid something unusual. i went to town centres,market squares and high streetsand i stood on a pallet – not a soapbox, but a pallet. and italked to peopleabout their lives. i remember this town meeting i had in cleverly. it wasjustcoming to the end of the meeting and this bloke wandered up. he was incrediblyangry. it’sa family show so i won’t exactly repeat what he said. he was soangry he wouldn’t give me hisname, but he did tell me his story about how hespent the last ten years looking after hisdisabled wife, and then another fouryears looking for a job and not finding one. he was angryabout immigration andsome people in the crowd booed him. but actually he wasn’t prejudiced,he justfelt the economy didn’t work for him. and then i think about the two markettraders imet in chesterfield, standing by their stalls, out in all weathers,working all hours, and they saidlook this country just doesn’t seem to berewarding our hard work and effort. there seem to besome people gettingsomething for nothing. this society is losing touch with our values. andthen ithink about this beautiful sunny spring day i spent in lincoln. and the face inthe crowd,this young woman who said she was an ambulance controller. so proudto be working for ournational health service. and so proud too of her youngson. because she was a single parent,nineteen years old, and what she said tome was, “why does everybody portray me as a burdenon the system? i am not aburden on the system, i am going out, i am doing the right thing forthecountry, why doesn’t anyone listen to my voice?” and then i think about thisscaffolder i metjust around the corner from where i live. i was just comingback from a local café i’d been at. hestopped in me the street, he said to me,“where’s your bodyguard?” i said i don’t have one,but that’s another story. hetold me his story. and what he said to me was “look, i go out, i dothe work, igo all around the country, again out in all weathers, i earn a decent wage, buti stillcan’t make ends meet”. and he said to me, “is anyone ever going to doanything about thosegas and electric bills that just go up and up, faster thani can earn a living?” he wantedsomeone to fight for him. now if you listen tothese stories – four of millions of the stories of ourcountry – and you haveyour own, and your friends and family, what do you learn? all of thesepeoplelove britain, they embody its great spirit, but they all believe that britaincan do betterthan this. today i say to them and millions of others you’reright, britain can do better thanthis, britain must do better than this,britain will do better than this with a government thatfights for you.

but for britain to do better thanthis we’ve got to understand why we got here, why thingsare so tough at themoment even while they tell you there is a recovery and why unless weputthings right it will only be a recovery for the few. now what i’m about to tellyou is the mostimportant thing i’m going to say today about what needs tochange about our country. forgenerations in britain when the economy grew themajority got better off. and then somewherealong the way that vital linkbetween the growing wealth of the country and your family financeswas broken.this is, this goes beyond one party or one government. it is more important toyouthan which party is in power, even more important than that. you see, when iwas growing up inthe 1980s, i saw the benefits of growing prosperity, peopleable to buy a house, a car, even asecond car, go on a foreign holiday theirgrandparents would never have dreamed of. not spendall their hours at work,able to spend time with kids, not working all the hours that god sends,have asecure pension in retirement and also believe that their kids would have abetter life thanthem. that feels a long way away from where britain is todaydoesn’t it and that is because it is.you see, somewhere along the way thatlink got broken. they used to say a rising tide lifts allboats, now the risingtide just seems to lift the yachts. now i say this to the people of britain. ifiwere you i wouldn’t even take a second look at a political party unless theymake this theircentral defining purpose because your future depends on it.your children’s future depends on it.britain’s future depends on it. i say weare britain we can do better than this.

now i have got a question for youladies and gentlemen, do the tories get it?

[audience: no]

oh come on, i didn’t hear you, dothe tories get it?

[audience: no]

ok that is better. they don’t getit do they. i want to say this. i understand why three anda half years agosome people might have thought that david cameron did get it and that iswhypeople voted for him at the last general election. but they voted for changeand i don’tbelieve they got the change that they were voting for. let me justexplain it this way: nextweek we are going to see david cameron resuming hislap of honour for how brilliantly he’sdone as prime minister. claiming creditfor his enormous achievements, how he has saved theeconomy as they put it. nodoubt he’ll even be taking off his shirt and flinging it into thecrowdexpecting adoration from the british people like he did recently on holiday andmaybe ishould make this promise while i’m about it, if i become prime ministeri won’t take my shirt offin public, i mean it is just not necessary is it.i’ll try and keep the promise. anyway, back todavid cameron, so he is going onthis lap of honour, everything is brilliant, he’s saved theeconomy, georgeosborne, he deserves the garlands as well, you know, aren’t theybrilliant.come on. the slowest recovery in one hundred years. one million youngpeoplelooking for work. more people on record working part-time who want full timework. morepeople than for a generation out of work for longer. the longestfall in living standards since1870. that is not worthy of a lap of honour.that is worthy of a lap of shame and that is therecord of this government.

he does have one record thoughbut i don’t think it credits a lap of honour. he has beenprime minister for 39months and in 38 of those months wages have risen more slowly thanprices. thatmeans your living standards falling year, after year, after year. so in 2019you’ll beasking am i better off now than i was five years ago? and we alreadyknow the answer formillions of families will be no. you’ve made the sacrifices,but you haven’t got the rewards. youwere the first into the recession but youare the last one out. now of course it would have takentime to recover fromthe global financial crisis whoever was in power. but when these toriestellyou that the pain will be worth the gain, don’t believe them. they can’t solvethe cost ofliving crisis and here is why. the cost of living crisis isn’t anaccident of david cameron’seconomic policy it is in his economic policy. letme explain why. you see he believes in this thingcalled the global race, butwhat he doesn’t tell you is that he thinks for britain to win theglobal raceyou have to lose, lower wages, worse terms and conditions, fewer rights atwork. butbritain can’t win a race for the lowest wages against countries wherewages rates are pennies anhour and the more we try the worse things will getfor you. britain can’t win a race for thefewest rights at work against thesweat shops of the world and the more we try the worse thingswill get for you.and britain can’t win a race for the lowest skilled jobs against countrieswherekids leave school at the age of 11. and the more we try the worse thingswill get for you. it is arace to the bottom. britain cannot and should not winthat race.

you see it is not the lowachievements of these tories that really gets me. that is badenough. it istheir low aspirations; it is their low aspirations for you. it is their lowaspirations forbritain but their high hopes for those at the top. the citybonuses are back. up 82% in aprilalone thanks to the millionaire’s tax cut. sowhen they tell you the economy is healing, thateverything is fixed, justremember, they are not talking about your life, they are talking abouttheirfriends at the top. that is who they are talking about; it is high hopes forthem. and everyso often you know the mask slips doesn’t it. the other day aman they call lord howell, he was ithink their advisor on fracking at onepoint… there is nothing funny about that. he said it waswrong to frack in someareas but it was ok in others, it was ok in the north east of englandbecausehe said, and i quote ‘it was full of desolate and uninhabited areas.’ in onecasual asidedismissing one whole region of the country. let’s tell thesetories about the north east ofengland and every other part of britain. peoplego out to work. they love their kids. they bringup their families. they carefor their neighbours. they look out for each other. they are proud oftheircommunities. they are proud of their communities. they hope for the future. thetories callthem inhabitants of desolate areas. we call them our friends, ourneighbours, the heroes of ourcountry. they are fed up of a government thatdoesn’t understand their lives and a primeminister who cannot walk in theirshoes. we are britain, we are better than this.

now, to make britain better wehave got to win a race to the top, not a race to the bottom.a race to the topwhich means that other countries will buy our goods the companies will comeandinvest here and that will create the wealth and jobs we need for the future butwe are notgoing to be able to do it easily. it is going to be tough and let mejust say this friends. you thinkopposition is tough, you should trygovernment. it is going to be tough; it is not going to beeasy. and i’m notgoing to stand here today and pretend to you it is. we are going to havetostick to strict spending limits to get the deficit down. we are not going to beable to spendmoney we don’t have and frankly if i told you we were going toyou wouldn’t believe me, thecountry wouldn’t believe me and they would beright not to believe me. but we can make adifference. we can win the race tothe top and let me tell you how. it is about the jobs wecreate, it is aboutthe businesses we support, it is about the talents we nurture, it is aboutthewages we earn and it is about the vested interests that we take on. let mestart with thejobs of the future. the environment is a passion of mine becausewhen i think about my twokids who are 2 and 4 at the moment and not talkingthat much about the environment, moreinterested in the octonauts. there’s aplug. in 20 years’ time they’ll say to me ‘were you thelast generation not toget climate change or the first generation to get it?’ that is thequestionthey’ll be asking.

but it is not just aboutenvironmental care. it is also about the jobs we create in the future.you seesome people say, including george osborne, that we can’t afford to haveenvironmentalat a time like this. he is dead wrong. we can’t afford not tohave an environmentalcommitment at a time like this. that is why labour willhave a world leading commitment ingovernment to take all of the carbon out ofour energy by 2030. a route map to one million newgreen jobs in our country.that is how we win the race to the top. and to win that race to thetop we havealso got to do something else, we’ve got to support the businesses of thefuture.now many of the new jobs in the future will come from a large number ofsmall businesses not asmall number of large businesses. and this is reallyimportant. if you think 15 years ahead, therate of change and dynamism is sogreat that most of the new jobs that will be being done willbe by companiesthat don’t yet exist. now that changes the priorities for government. whenthisgovernment came to office, since they came to office they cut taxes for largebusiness by £6bn but raised taxes on small businesses. now i don’t think thatis the right priority. yes weneed a competitive tax regime for largebusinesses but frankly they’ve short-changed smallbusiness and i’m going toput it right. if labour wins power in 2019 we will use the money thatthisgovernment would use to cut taxes for 80,000 large businesses to cut business ratesfor 1.5million businesses across our country. that is the way we win the raceto the top. one nationlabour. the party of small business. cutting smallbusiness rates when we come to office in2019 and freezing them the next yearbenefitting businesses by at least £450 a year. that ishow we win the race forthe top friends, and to win that race to the top we’ve also got tonurture thetalents of the next generation. the skills of people. there are so manybrilliantbusinesses in our country who provide amazing training for theworkforce, but look, we have gotto face facts, leading businesses say this tome too which is there aren’t enough of them and wehave got to work to changethat so we will say if you want a major government contract youmust provideapprenticeships for the next generation. and we’ll also say to companies doingtheright thing, training their workforce that they will have the power to calltime on free-riding bycompetitors who refuse to do the same. that’s how we winthe race to the top friends.

it’s not just business that hasto accept responsibility though, it’s young people. we have atragedy in thiscountry. hundreds of thousands of young people who leave school and end uponthe dole. we’ve got this word for it haven’t we? neet: not in educationemployment ortraining. behind that short word is a tragedy of hundreds ofthousands of wasted lives. if theschool system fails our young people theyshouldn’t be ending up on benefits. they should beending up in education ortraining so they can get back on the road to a proper career. thatrequiresthem to accept responsibility but it requires government too to acceptourresponsibilities for the next generation in britain, and that’s what we’ll do.

but to win the race to the top we’vealso got to take advantage of the talents of britain’s 12million parents.justine and i had one of the great privileges in any parent’s life this year,whichwas taking our son daniel to his first day at school. he was nervous atfirst, but actually prettysoon he started having fun; it’s a bit like beingleader of the labour party really. well it’s notexactly like being leader ofthe labour party. but look, for so many parents in this country thedemands ofthe daily school run, combined with their job are like their very own dailyassaultcourse and we’ve got to understand that. because we can’t win the raceto the top withstressed out parents and family life under strain – we’ve gotto change that.

in the last century, schoolsstayed open till mid-afternoon and that was okay back thenbecause one parentusually stayed at home. but it’s not okay now: that’s why we want everyprimaryschool in britain to have the breakfast clubs and after school care thatparents need andthat’s what the next labour government will do.

to win the race to the top we’vealso got to deal with the issue of low pay. the nationalminimum wage, one ofthe last labour government’s proudest achievements, friends. but wehave toface facts: there are millions of people in this country going out to work,coming home atnight, unable to afford to bring up their families. i just thinkthat’s wrong in one of the richestcountries in the world. the next labourgovernment must write the next chapter in dealingwith the scourge of low payin this country. and to do that though, we’ve got to learn lessonsfrom the waythe minimum wage came in, because it was about business and workingpeople,business and unions working together in the right way so we set the minimumwage atthe right level and we’ve got to do the same again. the minimum wagehas been falling in valueand we’ve got to do something about it.

there are some sectors, and idon’t often say anything nice about the banks but i willtoday, there are somesectors which actually can afford to pay higher wages, and some of themare - aliving wage in some of the banks. so we’ve got to look at whether there aresome sectorswhere we can afford a higher minimum but we’ve got to do it on theright basis – business andworking people working together. that’s what we willdo: the next labour government willstrengthen the minimum wage to make workpay for millions in our country. that’s how we winthe race to the top.

and to win that race to the topwe’ve got to call a halt to the race to the bottom, betweenworkers alreadyhere and workers coming here. i’m the son of two immigrant parents. i’mproudof the welcome britain gave me and my family, and we’ve always welcomed peoplewhowork, contribute and are part of our community. let me say this, if peoplewant a party thatwill cut itself off from the rest of the world, then let mesay squarely: labour is not your party.but if people want a party that willset the right rules for working people then labour is yourparty, the only partythat will do it. employers not paying the minimum wage and governmentturning ablind eye - it’s a race to the bottom; not under my government. recruitmentagencieshiring only from overseas – it’s a race to the bottom; not under mygovernment. shady gangmasters exploiting people in industries fromconstructing to food processing - it’s a race to thebottom; not under mygovernment. rogue landlords, putting 15 people in tied housing - it’s arace tothe bottom; not under my government. and our country, sending out a message totheworld that if you need to engage in shady employment practices, thenbritain is open forbusinesses? it’s a race to the bottom; not under mygovernment. and in case anyone askswhether this is pandering to prejudice,let’s tell them, it isn’t. it’s where labour has alwaysstood – counteringexploitation, whoever it affects, wherever they come from. we’ve neverbelievedin a race to the bottom, we’ve always believed in a race to the top, that isour party.

and to win the race to the topwe’ve also got to take on the vested interests that hold oureconomy back. inthe 1990s we committed to a dynamic market economy. think of thosewords:‘dynamic, ‘market’, ‘economy’. and then think about this, what happenswhencompetition fails? what happens when it just fails again and again and again?thengovernment has to act. train companies that put the daily commute out ofreach. paydaylenders who force people into unpayable debt. gas and electriccompanies that put prices up andup and up. it’s not good for an economy. it’snot a dynamic market economy when one sectionof society does so well at theexpense of others. it’s bad for families, it’s bad for business and it’sbadfor britain too.

now some people will just blamethe companies but actually i don’t think that’s where theblame lies. i thinkit lies with government. i think it lies with government for not having hadthestrength to take this on. not having stood up to the powerful interests. nothaving thestrength to stand up to the strong.

take the gas and electricitycompanies. we need successful energy companies, in britain. weneed them toinvest for the future. but you need to get a fair deal and frankly, there willneverbe public consent for that investment unless you do get a fair deal. andthe system is brokenand we are going to fix it.

if we win the election 2019 thenext labour government will freeze gas and electricityprices until the startof 2019. your bills will not rise. it will benefit millions of families andmillionsof businesses. that’s what i mean by a government that fights for you. that’swhat imean when i say britain can do better than this.

now the companies aren’t going tolike this because it will cost them more but they havebeen overcharging peoplefor too long because of a market that doesn’t work. it’s time to resetthemarket. so we will pass legislation in our first year in office to do that, andhave a regulatorthat will genuinely be on the customers’ side but also enablethe investment we need. that’show britain will do better than this.

so, making britain better thanthis starts with our economy – your economic success as afoundation forbritain’s economic success. but it doesn’t just stop there it goes to oursociety aswell. i told you earlier on about those market traders inchesterfield and how they felt thatsociety had lost touch with their values. ithink what they were really saying was this: that theyput in huge hard workand effort, they bring up their kids in the right way and they just feelthattheir kids are going to have a worse life than them. and nowhere is that moretrue thanwhen it comes to renting or buying a home.

there are 9 million people inthis country renting a home, many of whom who would want tobuy. 9 million people- we don’t just have a cost of living crisis, we have a housing crisis too.in2019 when we left office there was a problem. there were one million too fewhomes inbritain. if we carry on as we are, by 2020 there will be two milliontoo few homes in britain. thatis the equivalent of two cities the size ofbirmingham. wave got to do something about it andthe next labour governmentwill. so we’ll say to private developers, you can’t just sit on landand refuseto build. we will give them a very clear message - either use the land or losethe land,that is what the next labour government will do.

we’ll say to local authoritiesthat they have a right to grow, and neighbouring authoritiescan’t just stopthem. we’ll identify new towns and garden cities and we’ll have a clear aimthatby the end of the parliament britain will be building 200,000 homes ayear, more than at anytime in a generation. that’s how we make britain betterthan this.

and nowhere do we need to put thevalues of the british people back at the heart of ourcountry more than in ournational health service, the greatest institution of our country. youknow ihad a letter a couple of months back from a 17 year old girl. she was sufferingfromdepression and anxiety and she told me a heart-breaking story about howshe had ended upin hospital for 10 weeks. mental health is a truly one nationproblem. it covers rich and poor,north and south, young and old alike andlet’s be frank friends, in the privacy of this room;we’ve swept it under thecarpet for too long. it’s a bit of a british thing isn’t it; we don’t liketotalk about it. if you’ve got a bad back or if you’re suffering from cancer youcan talk abbot itbut if you’ve got depression or anxiety you don’t want totalk about it because somehow itdoesn’t seem right – we’ve got to change that.it’s an afterthought in our national healthservice.

and here’s a really interestingthing – so you might say, it’s going to be really tough timesed, you told usthat before. you said there would be really difficult decisions in government,andthat’s true, so how are you going to make it work? well here’s the thing,the 17-year-old said inthat letter, look if someone had actually identifiedthe problem when it started three yearsearlier i wouldn’t have ended up inhospital. i wouldn’t have ended up costing the statethousands of pounds andthe anguish that i had. so it’s about that early identification andtalkingabout this issue.

and if it’s true of mentalhealth, it’s true in an even bigger way about care for the elderly.there’s somuch more our country could be doing for our grandmas and granddads, mumanddads, nuclease and aunts. and it’s the same story. just putting a £50 grab railin the homestops somebody falling over, prevents them ending up in hospitalwith the needless agony,and all of the money that it costs. the 1945 labourgovernment, in really tough times, raised itssights and created the nationalhealth service. i want the next labour government to do thesame, even in toughtimes, to raise our sights about what the health service can achieve,bringingtogether physical health, mental health, and the care needs of the elderly: atrueintegrated national health service. that’s the business of the future.

but we don’t just need to improvethe health service, friends; we’ve got to rescue it fromthese tories. and theliberals too. now look, before the election, i remember the speeches bydavidcameron. i remember one where he said the three most important letters to himwerenhs. well he has got a funny way of showing it, hasn’t he? and when theycame to office, theywere still saying how brilliant was in the health service,how the health service was doing greatthings and the doctors and nurses and soon. now have you noticed they have changed theirtune recently? suddenly theyare saying how bad everything is in the nhs. now the vastmajority of doctorsand nurses do a fantastic job. sometimes things go wrong. and when theydo, weshould be the first people to say so. but hear me on this. the reason davidcameron isrunning down the nhs is not because the doctors and nurses aren’tdoing as good a job as theywere before. it is because they have come to arealisation that the health service is gettingworse on their watch and theyare desperately thrashing around trying to find someone else toblame. blamethe doctors, blame the nurses, blame the last labour government. that iswhatthey are doing. well let me tell you about the record of the last labourgovernment. whenwe came to office there were waiting time targets of 18 monthsthat were not being met, whenwe left office there were waiting time targets of18 weeks that were being met. when we cameto office there was an annual wintera&e crisis, when we left office the people had a&eservices they couldrely on. when we came to office there were fewer doctors and nurses, wewhenleft office more doctors and nurses than ever before. and when we came tooffice peoplesaid well the health service, it was a good idea in previous generationsbut i don’t really believeit will be there in the next, and we left officewith the highest public satisfaction in the historyof the health services. yesfriends, we did rescue the national health service. so when you heardavidcameron casting around for someone to blame for what is happening in the nhsjustremember it is not complicated, it’s simple, it’s as simple as abc: whenit comes to blame, itis anyone but cameron. we know who is responsible, thetop-down reorganisation that nobodyvoted for and nobody wanted, the abolitionof nhs direct, the cuts to social care, thefragmentation of services. we knowwho is responsible for thousands of fewer nurses, we knowwho is responsiblenot just for an annual a&e crisis, but an a&e crisis for all seasons.itis this prime minister who is responsible. so friends it is the same oldstory, we rescue the nhs,they wreck the nhs and we have to rescue it all overagain. and that is what the next labourgovernment will do.

right, i have explained to youhow we can make britain better by changing our economyand changing oursociety, and now i want to talk about how we change our politics. and hereisthe bit you have all been looking forward to: party reform. now look let me sayto you, changeis difficult, change is uncomfortable. and i understand whypeople are uncomfortable aboutsome of the changes, but i just want to explainto you why i think it is so important. with all ofthe forces ranged againstus, we can’t just be a party of 200,000 people. we have got to be aparty of500,000, 600,000, or many more. and i am optimistic enough – some mightsayidealistic enough – to believe that is possible. and the reason it is possiblein our party is theunique link we have with the trade unions. the unique link.i don’t want to end that link, iwant to mend that link. and i want to hear thevoices of individual working people in our party,louder than before. becauseyou see, think about our history. it is many of you who have beentelling usthat actually we haven’t been rooted enough in the workplaces of our country.andthat is what i want to change. and that is the point of my reforms. see myreforms are abouthearing the voices of people from call centre workers toconstruction workers, from people withsmall businesses to people working insupermarkets at the heart of our party. because you see itis about my view ofpolitics. leaders matter, of course they do, leadership matters, but in theendpolitical change happens because people make it happen. and you can’t be aparty thatproperly fights for working people unless you have working people atthe core of your party, upand down this country. that is the point of myreforms. and i want to work with you to makethem happen so that we can makeourselves a mass-membership party. friends, let’s makeourselves truly thepeople’s party once again.

but to change our politics wehave got to a lot more than that. we have got to hear thevoices of people thathaven’t been heard for a long time. i think about our young people,theirtalent, their energy, their voices. the voices of young people demanding a job,the voicesof young people who demand that we shoulder and don’t shirk ourresponsibilities to theenvironment. the voices of gay and lesbian young peoplewho led the fight and won the battlefor equal marriage in britain. and thevoices of young people, particularly young women, whosay in 2019 the battlefor equality is not won. you see they are not satisfied that 33% of labourmpsare women, they want it to be 50% and they are right. they are not satisfiedthat 40 yearsafter the equal pay act, we still do not have equal pay for workof equal value in this country.they are not satisfied and they are right. andthey are not satisfied that in britain in 2019,women are still subject toviolence, harassment, and everyday sexism. they are not satisfied andthey areright. friends, let’s give a voice to these young people in our party. andlet’s give avoice to these young people in our democracy, let’s give the voteto 16 and 17 year olds andmake them part of our democracy.

but you know we have got to winthe battle for perhaps the most important institution ofall, our unitedkingdom. friends, devolution works. carwyn jones, our brilliant first ministerofwales, he is showing devolution works. and let’s praise the leadership ofour scottish joannelamont for the brilliant job she is doing against alexsalmond. now that referendum onseptember the 18th 2019, it is going to beconducted on the basis of fact and figures andarguments and counterarguments,but i have a story i want to tell you which i think says evenmore. it’s thestory of cathy murphy. cathy murphy lives in glasgow, she worked in thelocalsupermarket. in 2019, cathy was diagnosed with a serious heart problem, but shecame tolabour conference nonetheless in 2019 as a delegate. she fell seriouslyill. her family werecalled down from glasgow. the doctors said to her that tosave her life they’d have to give her avery long and very risky operation. shehad that operation a few weeks later at the world-leadingliverpool broadgreenhospital. cathy pulled through. she went back to glasgow some weekslater. shecomes back down to liverpool every six months for her check-up. now she said tomethe nurses and doctors don’t ask whether she is english or scottish, thehospital doesn’t carewhere she lives. they care about her because she isscottish and british, a citizen of our unitedkingdom. friends, cathy is withus today, back as a delegate. where is she? cathy’s here.friends, i don’t wantcathy to become a foreigner. let’s win the battle for the united kingdom.

so i have talked to you todayabout policy and what a labour government would do, how itwould make britainbetter and win a race to the top in our economy, put our society back intouchwith people’s values and change our politics so it lets new voices in. but thenext electionisn’t just going to be about policy. it is going to be about howwe lead and the character weshow. i have got a message for the tories today:if they want to have a debate about leadershipand character, be my guest. andif you want to know the difference between me and davidcameron, here’s an easyway to remember it. when it was murdoch versus the mccanns, he tookthe side ofmurdoch. when it was the tobacco lobby versus the cancer charities, he took thesideof the tobacco lobby. when it was the millionaires who wanted a tax cutversus people payingthe bedroom tax, he took the side of the millionaires.come to think of it, here is an even easierway to remember it: david cameronwas the prime minister who introduced the bedroom tax, i’llbe the primeminister who repeals the bedroom tax.

you see here is the thing aboutdavid cameron. he may be strong at standing up to theweak, but he is alwaysweak when it comes to standing up against the strong. that is thedifferencebetween me and david cameron, so let’s have that debate about leadershipandcharacter, and i relish that debate. and we know what we are going to see fromthese toriesbetween now and the general election, it is the lowest form ofpolitics, it is divide and rule.people on benefits versus those in work.people in unions against those outside union. people inthe private sectorversus those in the public sector. people in the north against those inthesouth. it is the worst form of politics. like sending vans into areas ofbritain where people’smums and granddads have lived for years, generations,and telling people to go home. i say weare britain, we are better than this.telling anyone who’s looking for a job that they are ascrounger. however hardthey are looking, even if the work is not available. i say we are britainweare better than this. so come on. so david cameron i have got a message foryou. you cantell your lynton crosby, it might work elsewhere, it won’t workhere. we’re britain, we’re betterthan this.

friends, the easy path forpolitics is to divide, that’s the easy part. you need to know thisabout me, ibelieve in seeing the best in people, not the worst. that’s what i am about.that’show we create one nation. that’s how we make britain better than this.that’s how we have agovernment that fights for you.

now, it is going to be a bigfight between now and the general election. prepare yourself forthat fight.but when you think about that fight, don’t think about our party, think aboutourcountry. i don’t want to win this fight for labour; i want to win it forbritain. and just rememberthis, throughout our history, when the voices ofhope have been ranged against the voices offear, the voices of hope have wonthrough. those who said at the dawn of the industrialrevolution that workingpeople needed the vote and they wouldn’t wait - they knew britaincould bebetter than this, and we were. those that said, at the birth of a new century,those whosaid at the birth of a new century that working people needed a partyto fight for them and theold order wouldn’t do – they knew britain could bebetter than this, and we were. those whosaid at our darkest hour in the secondworld war that britain needed to rebuild after the warand said ‘never again’,they knew britain could be better than this, and we did. those who said,as the20th century grew old, that the battle for equality was still young; they knewbritain coulddo better than this, and we did.

and so now it falls to us, tobuild one nation, a country for all, a britain we rebuild together.britain’sbest days lie ahead. britain can do better than this. we’re britain, we’rebetter thanthis. i’ll lead a government that fights for you.

第3篇 英国首相卡梅伦在2019英国保守*年会英语演讲稿

this week in manchester we’veshown this party is on the side of hardworking people.

helping young people buy theirown home.

getting the long-term unemployedback to work.

freezing fuel duty.

backing marriage.

cutting the deficit.

creating jobs.

creating wealth.

make no mistake: it is this partywith the verve, energy and ideas to take our countryforward…

…and i want to thank everyonehere for the great week we’ve had.

when we came to office, we faceda clear and daunting task: to turn our country around.

in may 2019, the needle on thegauge was at crisis point.

people were talking about ourcountry in a way they had not done for decades.

but three and a half years later,we are beginning to turn the corner.

the deficit is falling.

our economy is growing.

the numbers of our fellowcountrymen and women in work are rising.

we are not there yet, not by along way.

but, my friends, we are on ourway.

i want to thank the people whohave done the most to get us this far.

you. the british people.

never giving up. working thoseextra hours. coping with those necessary cuts.

you. british business. you keptpeople on in the hard times. invested before you knew forcertain that thingswere getting better.

together – we are clearing up themess that labour left.

but i have a simple question, tothe people in this hall and beyond it.

is that enough?

is it enough that we just clearup labour’s mess and think ‘job done’?

is it enough to just fix whatwent wrong?

i say – no. not for me.

this isn’t job done; it is jobbegun.

i didn’t come into politics justto fix what went wrong, but to build something right.

we in this party – we don’t dreamof deficits and decimal points and dry fiscal plans

…our dreams are about helpingpeople get on in life…

…aspiration, opportunity…

…these are our words, our dreams.

so today i want to talk about ourone, abiding mission…

…i believe it is the greatconservative mission…

… that as our economy starts torecover…

…we build a land of opportunityin our country today.

now, i know, it’ll be tough.

but i know we’ve got what ittakes in this party.

some people say “can’t be done” –conservatives say “what’s to stop us?”

they said we couldn’t getterrorists out of our own country.

well – theresa knew otherwise...

...and that’s why abu qatada hadhis very own may day this year...

…didn’t it feel good seeing himget on that plane?

some people said the nhs wasn’tsafe in our hands.

well – we knew otherwise.

who protected spending on thenhs? not labour – us.

who started the cancer drugsfund? not labour – us.

and by the way – who presidedover mid staffs…

…patients left for so longwithout water, they were drinking out of dirty vases...

...people’s grandparents lyingfilthy and unwashed for days.

who allowed that to happen? yes,it was labour...

...and don’t you dare lectureanyone on the nhs again.

and some people say a lot ofthings on europe.

you’ll never be able to veto aneu treaty.

you’ll never cut the budget.

and if you did these things–you’d have no allies in europe.

well we’ve proved them wrong.

i vetoed that treaty…

…i got britain out of the eubail-out scheme…

…and yes – i cut that budget.

and in doing all this, we haven’tlost respect – we’ve won allies to get powers back fromeurope.

that is what we will do...

...and at the end of it – yes –we will give the british people their say in a referendum.

that is our pledge. it will beyour choice: in or out.

britain in the world

and friends, you know whatsomeone said about us recently?

apparently some russian officialsaid: britain is “just a small island that no-one pays anyattention to.”

really?

let me just get this off mychest.

when the world wanted rights, whowrote magna carta?

when they wanted representation,who built the first parliament?

when they looked for compassion,who led the abolition of slavery?

when they searched for equality,who gave women the vote?

when their freedom was in peril,who offered blood, toil, tears and sweat?

and today – whose music do theydance to?

whose universities do they flockto?

whose football league do theywatch?

whose example of tolerance…

…of people living together fromevery nation, every religion, young and old, straight andgay…

…whose example do they aspire to?

i haven’t even got on to the factthat this small island beat russia in the olympics lastyear…

…or that the biggest-sellingvodka brand in the world isn’t russian, it’s british – smirnoff –made in fife…

...so yes, we may be a smallisland…

…but i tell you what, we’re agreat country.

but i want to make a seriouspoint about our place in the world.

following that vote on syria inthe house of commons, some people said it was time forbritain to re-think ourrole.

i’m sorry – but i don’t agree.

if we shrunk from the world wewould be less safe and less prosperous.

the role we play, theorganisations we belong to...

... and yes – the fact ourdefence budget remains the 4th largest in the world...

...all this is not about nationalvanity – it’s about our national interest.

when british citizens –ourfathers, mothers, daughters– are in danger...

...whether that’s in the desertsof algeria or the city of nairobi…

…then combatting internationalterrorism – it matters to us.

when five of the world’s fastestgrowing economies are african…

…then trading with africa – andyes helping africa to develop with aid – that matters to us.

and at the heart of all this work– the finest foreign secretary i could ask for: williamhague.

around the world, we really domatter as a united kingdom…

…england, wales, northern irelandand scotland.

the date of the referendum hasbeen set. the decision is for scotland to make.

all the arguments about oureconomy, jobs, currency – i believe they make an unanswerablecase for the uk.

but today i want a more simplemessage to go out to all the people of scotland.

from us here in this hall, fromme, from this party, from this country, from england, wales,northern ireland…

…and it’s this:

we want you to stay.

we want to stick together.

think of all we’ve achievedtogether – the things we can do together.

the nations – as one.

our kingdom – united.

for 12 years now, men and womenfrom all parts of these islands have been serving theircountry in afghanistan.

next year, the last of our combattroops will be coming home...

...having trained up the afghansto look after their own country.

more than a decade of war.

sacrifice beyond measure – fromthe finest and bravest armed forces in the world.

and i want us to stand, to raisethe roof in here, to show just how proud of those men andwomen we are.

thatcher

we in this room are a team.

and this year, we said goodbye toone of our team.

margaret thatcher made ourcountry stand tall again, at home and abroad.

rescuing our economy. givingpower to our people. spreading home ownership. creatingwork. winning the coldwar. saving the falklands.

i asked her about her recordonce.

i was sitting next to her at adinner – and i was really nervous.

as ever she was totally charming,she put me at ease...

...but after a while i said:“margaret, if you had your time in government again, is thereanything you’d dodifferently?”

and she turned to me and said:“you know, i think i did pretty well the first time around.”

well we can all agree with that –and we can all agree on this...

...she was the greatestpeace-time prime minister our country has ever had.

labour’s mess

margaret thatcher had an almightymess to clear up when she came to office…

…and so did we.

we will never forget what wefound.

the biggest budget deficit in ourpeace-time history.

the deepest recession since thesecond world war.

but it wasn’t just the debt anddeficit labour left…

…it was who got hurt.

millions coming here fromoverseas while millions of british people were left on welfare.

the richest paying lower taxrates than their cleaners.

unsustainable, debt-fuelled banksbooming – while manufacturing withered away.

the north falling further behind.

towns where a quarter of peoplelived on benefits.

schools where 8 out of 10children didn’t get five decent gcses.

yes, they were famously“intensely relaxed” about people getting filthy rich…

...but tragically, they were also“intensely relaxed” about people staying stuck on welfareyear after year...

…“intensely relaxed” aboutchildren leaving school without proper qualifications so theycouldn’t hope toget a job at the end of it.

that was it.

that was what they left.

the casino economy meets thewelfare society meets the broken education system...

…a country for the few built bythe so-called party of the many…

…and labour: we will never letyou forget it.

our mission

these past few years have been areal struggle.

but what people want to know nowis: was the struggle worth it?

and here’s the honest answer.

the struggle will only be worthit if we as a country finish the job we’ve started.

finishing the job meansunderstanding this.

our economy may be turning thecorner – and of course that’s great.

but we still haven’t finishedpaying for labour’s debt crisis.

if anyone thinks that’s over,done, dealt with - they’re living in a fantasy land.

this country’s debt crisis,created by labour, is not over.

after three years of cuts, westill have one of the biggest deficits in the world.

we are still spending more thanwe earn.

we still need to earn more andyes, our government still needs to spend less.

i see that labour have stoppedtalking about the debt crisis and now they talk about thecost of livingcrisis.

as if one wasn’t directly relatedto the other.

if you want to know what happensif you don’t deal with a debt crisis...

...and how it affects the cost ofliving...

...just go and ask the greeks.

so finishing the job meanssticking to our course until we’ve paid off all of labour’s deficit,not justsome of it.

and yes – let’s run a surplus sothat this time we fix the roof when the sun is shining...

...as george said in thatbrilliant speech on monday.

to abandon deficit reduction nowwould throw away all the progress we’ve made.

it would put us back to squareone.

unbelievably, that’s exactly whatlabour now want to do.

how did they get us into thismess?

too much spending, too muchborrowing, too much debt.

and what did they propose lastweek?

more spending, more borrowing,more debt.

they have learned nothing –literally nothing – from the crisis they created.

but finishing the job is aboutmore than clearing up the mess we were left.

it means building somethingbetter in its place.

in place of the casino economy,one where people who work hard can actually get on.

in place of the welfare society,one where no individual is written off.

in place of the broken educationsystem, one that gives every child the chance to rise up andsucceed.

our economy, our society,welfare, schools…

...all reformed, all rebuilt -with one aim, one mission in mind:

to make this country, at longlast and for the first time ever, a land of opportunity for all.

for all.

so it makes no difference whetheryou live in the north or in the south, whether you’re blackor you’re white, aman or a woman, the school you went to, the background you have, whoyourparents were…

...what matters is the effort youput in, and if you put the effort in you’ll have the chance tomake it.

that’s what the land ofopportunity means.

that’s what finishing the jobmeans.

of course i know that others in politicsmay talk about these things.

but wishing for something, caringabout something - that’s not enough.

you can’t conjure up a dynamiceconomy, a strong society, fantastic schools all with thestroke of aminister’s pen.

it takes a mixture of hard work,common sense and – above all – the right values.

when the left say: you can’texpect too much from the poorest kids; don’t ask too muchfrom people onwelfare; business is the problem, not the solution…

…here in this party we say:that’s just wrong.

if you expect nothing of peoplethat does nothing for them.

yes, you must help people – butyou help people by putting up ladders that they can climbthrough their ownefforts.

you don’t help children succeedby dumbing down education…

...you help them by pushing themhard.

good education is not aboutequality of outcomes but bringing the best out of every singlechild.

you don’t help people by leavingthem stuck on welfare…

...but by helping them stand ontheir own two feet.

why? because the best way out ofpoverty is work – and the dignity that brings.

we know that profit, wealthcreation, tax cuts, enterprise...

...these are not dirty, elitistwords – they’re not the problem...

...they really are the solutionbecause it’s not government that creates jobs, it’s businesses…

…it’s businesses that get wagesin people’s pockets, food on their tables, hope for theirfamilies and successfor our country.

there is no shortcut to a land ofopportunity. no quick fix. no easy way to do it.

you build it business by business,school by school, person by person…

...patiently,practically, painstakingl

第4篇 英国财政大臣奥斯本在英国保守*2019年秋季年会英语演讲稿

thank you, digby, for that warm and typically robust birmingham welcome.

gathered here in this hall are the representatives of britain's great party of progress.

the party of enterprise and discovery, of liberty and the law, of the wide open seas and globalfree trade.

and we meet to lay out our case before the nation and to ask it to choose the future not thepast.

in broad street, just around the corner from this conference, stands the statue of the goldenboys.

the three great british pioneers:

matthew boulton, william murdoch, and james watt, are studying intently their plans for thenew steam engine.

it's an image that captures a golden age for our country, when the spirit of invention was aliveand the marriage of business and science made everything possible.

a time when we faced the future with confidence, and weren't afraid of the big answers to thebig questions.

i want us to be that britain.

let's raise the ambition of the nation so that everyone has the chance to succeed.

i believe it is perfectly possible for britain to be the most prosperous major country on earth.the most prosperous, the most dynamic, the most creative.

but only if we, in our generation, provide the big answers to the big questions.

only if we choose the future not the past.

for anyone who doubts this is possible, just think about what we've done together these lastfour years.

four years ago, our economy was in crisis, our country was on the floor.

but we did what we britons do best when we're being counted out.

we picked ourselves up, we sorted ourselves out and got back in the fight.

we set out our long term economic plan and worked through it.

and then two years ago in this very hall - when the clamour of our opponents was loudest andthey insisted we should abandon that plan - we held our nerve and recommitted ourselves tothe course we had set.

today i can report this to you: britain is the fastest growing, most job creating, most deficitreducing of any major advanced economy on earth.

britain, we did this together.

we made a choice to leave behind a past of spending beyond our means, a past of borrowingfrom our children.

we chose the future not the past.

we've come this far.

the deficit falling.

investment rising.

record numbers of new firms.

business growth faster in the north than anywhere else.

long term unemployment down.

youth unemployment down.

the fastest fall in unemployment on record.

almost 2 million new jobs. our long term economic plan is working.

these are the statistics.

behind each number is a person - in fact millions of people - who because of what we've donetogether now have a job.

who because of what we've done together now run their own business.

who because of what we've done together are providing for themselves and their families.

and everyone in this hall should be proud of that.

but let me tell you:

i don't stand here marvelling at how much we have done;

on the contrary i'm humbled by how much more we have to do.

the debts that need reducing.

the small businesses that need supporting.

the jobless who need employing.

the infrastructure that needs building.

the better future for britain that needs securing.

we here resolve: we will finish the job we have started.

we know that beyond the confines of all these party conferences, britain still faces hugeeconomic risks.

at home, though we've brought it down, there remains a large budget deficit and our nationaldebt is dangerously high.

abroad, our biggest markets in the eurozone are not growing.

anyone who thinks britain can ease up should look across the channel - look to the countrieswho thought they were out of crisis, eased up and so now risk returning to crisis.

and then there is the wider world beyond.

the borders with russia are aflame;

a terrible virus is sweeping through west africa;

and we're engaged in a generational struggle against barbaric islamist extremism.

our armed forces are once again risking their lives to protect our freedom. let us togethersalute their courage.

any and all of these events have an impact, not just on our national security but on oureconomic security.

these are big questions - but they're not the only ones we face.

we are also living through an economic upheaval as big as the industrial revolution - everysingle day new technologies, and new companies, and new economies are fundamentallyshaking up the established way of doing things.

it's extraordinarily exciting, and we as conservatives applaud the power it places in the handsof citizens.

it's never been easier for thousands to start their own business in britain, and reach the wholeworld.

but a single app can appear overnight and disrupt an entire industry.

it can be exciting - yes - but unsettling too.

for this technology brings intense competition that spells rapid decline for any sector, or anycountry, that fails to keep up.

these are big questions that require big answers.

and it is our job to provide them - and the next conservative government will.

that is what this party has always done - apply our values and ideas to the challenges of theage and march this country towards progress, and that is what we will do again.

labour can't do that.

did you see that speech last week?

ed miliband made a pitch for office that was so forgettable that he forgot it himself.

but i have to tell you, in all seriousness, that forgetting to talk about the deficit is not justsome hapless mistake of an accident prone politician.

it is completely and totally a disqualification for the high office he seeks.

the economy may mean nothing to labour - but it means everything to the people of britain.

it means our security, and whether we pay our bills and provide for our families - and haverewarding jobs and enjoy decent retirements.

and you know what?

there is a fashionable claim made these days - a claim that the link between the prosperityof the national economy, and the prosperity of the people who live in that economy has beenbroken.

i want to take that head on because it is a dangerous fallacy.

ask the millions of people who lost their jobs, whose incomes were cut, whose aspirations weredestroyed by the great recession;

ask them whether they think the link between their lives and the life of the economy is broken -and they will tell you from bitter experience that it is not.

ask the people who have bought a home because we have created the conditions for builders tobuild, and they will say: yes, it's the economy that builds houses.

and ask the millions each day who rely on our nhs too.

last week you heard promises that were built on sand.

let's be clear.

you cannot have a properly funded national health service unless you have a properly runeconomy.

put another way: it's only because we were willing to take difficult decisions on spending inother departments that we are able to increase the nhs budget every year of this parliament.

so don't let anyone in this party concede the nhs to labour.

they would ruin our nhs.

the real party of the nhs is in this hall today.

the idea that you can raise living standards or fund the brilliant nhs we want, or provide forour national security without a plan to fix the economy is a nonsense.

it's the economy that creates jobs.

it's the economy that pays for hospitals.

it's the economy that puts food on the table.

and we're the only party in britain with a plan to fix the economy.

that is the leadership we have offered the country these five years in office - and that is theleadership we should offer for the next five years.

true leadership.

leadership that is working.

the leadership offered by our prime minister, david cameron.

leadership means making choices.

and britain faces some big choices.

choices about whether we're going to live within our means, or let rising debts threaten oureconomy again.

choices about whether we're going to win business and investment, or drive it away.

choices about whether we're going to tackle youth unemployment, and poor standards in ourschools, or let down a generation.

choices about building the infrastructure our future economy needs, or letting it decay.

choices about whether we are going to trust hardworking taxpayers to make their own decisionsabout their lives and their communities, or take control away from them.

the past or the future

that is the choice britain faces.

and we in this hall have no doubts. we will choose the future.

we face some immediate choices about protecting britain's hard-won economic stability

earlier this morning we heard from paul bunyan.

he gave us a powerful testimony of what economic security looks like in real life, and whathappens when you lose it.

he knows because seven years ago he was working in a branch of northern rock in newcastle.

he watched the queues of people desperate to withdraw their savings before the bankcollapsed.

he saw britain on the brink and he says we must never go back. and so do we.

economic security is at the core of what we conservatives offer.

the security of knowing that our banks are safe - so the next conservative government willring-fence high street branches from the riskier city trading floors.

the security of making sure our housing market doesn't bring down our financial system.

so i am giving the bank of england extra powers to curb property booms and stop mortgagesbeing given to people who cannot afford to repay them.

we also need the security of knowing that britain can pay its way.

the budget deficit is approaching half what it was when we came to office, but it is still far toohigh.

so we will see through our plan to eliminate it.

and then to ensure our country is never in this position again, we must run surpluses in thegood years.

and when i say surpluses, i mean the government raising more than it spends.

labour claim they will balance the books. but independent experts tell you the truth: theirplans would mean they would borrow ?28 billion more each year.

running an overall surplus is the only sure way of getting our dangerously high national debtdown.

let the message go out from this conference:

after what they put this country through.

we will fix the roof when the sun is shining.

and that presents me with a choice - indeed, it presents all politicians with a choice.

we can either pretend to the british people before the election that this can be done withhardly any cuts. that's what we saw last week.

or we can level with people now, and tell them the kind of difficult decisions that are stillrequired to fix the economy.

i've done this job for almost five years.

and i can tell you, it's only because we've levelled with people that we've been able to bringthem with us on the journey our country has had to take.

the latest treasury estimate is that eliminating the deficit requires a further ?25 billion ofpermanent public expenditure savings or new taxes.

and i tell you in all candour, that the option of taxing your way out of a deficit no longerexists, if it ever did.

in a modern global economy where people can move their investment from one country toanother at the touch of a button - and companies can relocate jobs overnight - the economicsof high taxation are the economics of the past.

and we choose the future.

the problem for a modern country like britain is not that it taxes too little - it is that it spendstoo much.

the proposals labour present to the country for higher taxes on income, taxes on business,taxes on savings, on investments, on finance, on pensions, homes and on jobs, would be aneconomic disaster for every person in the united kingdom.

and by the way, when scotland is rightly given greater control over its taxes, i suspect thepeople of scotland will choose to put them down not up.

let me be clear: we will honour in full our commitments to scotland.

and we are also absolutely clear that, as scots get more control over their taxes, it is rightthat northern ireland, wales and england should get more control over their taxes and theirlaws too.

now i'm not going to pretend that finding ?25 billion of spending savings will be easy; but noris it impossible.

we have already found ?100 billion of savings in this parliament, so we have the track record toshow it can be done if you have discipline and grip.

in every election i have fought, conservatives have argued you can have better public serviceswithout borrowing and spending more.

that it's about making government more efficient and effective.

and labour have argued you cannot.

i believe that the record of this government has settled this argument for good.

labour were wrong.

and we were right.

theresa may has reduced the home office budget by almost 20%, but crime is down.

michael gove and nicky morgan have cut the education department bureaucracy in half, butschool standards are up.

and please join me in thanking our outstanding conservative treasury team who are helpingachieve this:

david gauke, andrea leadsom, priti patel, paul deighton and my brilliant pps rob halfon.

so, to eliminate the deficit and finish the job, we will reduce whitehall spending by at least thesame rate for the first two years of the next parliament as we have done through thisparliament.

that will save at least ?13 billion.

we will go on restraining public sector pay.

and there will have to be less welfare spending too.

welfare makes up a third of the entire government budget.

we are going to live in a country where the elderly have dignity in retirement and thevulnerable and people with disabilities are protected.

but we can't afford to live in one where we spend ?100 billion on welfare payments for people ofworking age.

?100 billion.

when we have such debts?

even with the reforming decisions that iain duncan smith and i have taken, benefits have risenmore than earnings since labour's great recession.

that is not sustainable for any nation.

and it's not fair either.

so i can tell you this today.

working age benefits in britain will have to be frozen for two years.

this is the choice britain needs to take to protect our economic stability and to secure abetter future.

the fairest way to reduce welfare bills is to make sure that benefits are not rising faster thanthe wages of the taxpayers who are paying for them.

for we will provide a welfare system that is fair to those who need it, and fair to those who payfor it too.

this freeze in working age benefits saves the country over ?3bn. it is a serious contribution toreducing the deficit.

pensioner benefits and disability benefits will be excluded.

and to those in work i say this: where is the sense in taxing you more, only for you to be givensome of your own money back in welfare.

the best way to support peoples' incomes is to make sure those out of work get a job and thosein work pay less tax.

that is why i am the chancellor in budget after budget who is increasing the tax-free personalallowance to ?10,500, meaning working people on low and middle incomes keep up to ?800more of their hard earned money.

it's why we have cut taxes for savers, for homeowners, for small businesses, the self-employed,cut taxes for everyone who pays their council tax or fills up their car.

and that is why we have cut jobs taxes and increased work incentives, and as a result there arealmost two million more in work. that is the choice we have made.

the good news is youth unemployment has fallen sharply.

the sad news is there are still too many young people who have fallen into a culture of welfaredependency and a life on the dole.

it's a scar on our society. it's a tragic waste of human talent. and we can end it in the nextparliament.

so let this party of progress make another choice.

let's abolish long term youth unemployment altogether.

so here's how we'll do it.

we'll replace job seekers allowance.

reform housing benefit.

and take the benefit cap we've introduced down to ?23,000 - because families out of workshould not get more than the average family in work.

and all of these savings will be used to fund three million new apprenticeships.

three million more chances for a better life.

so we help our citizens get jobs instead of more immigration from abroad.

we have a choice between paying our young people for a life on the dole, or giving them thekeys to a life of opportunity.

be in no doubt which side this party is on: we choose their future.

so this country must pay its debts, drive down its deficit, pull down its taxes, and pull up itsyoung people.

and it must be the place where business invests and businesses thrive.

it's not by accident that more than two million private sector jobs have been created under thisgovernment.

it is the deliberate policy of this government to support job creators.

and yet for the first time in my adult life we have a labour party that is positively anti-business.

it came through in every sentence ed miliband remembered - the bit we wished he'd forgotten.

by the general election we will have delivered on the promise i made to you in my first speechas chancellor, here in birmingham.

britain will have the lowest, most competitive business taxes of any large country in the world.

unbelievably, labour want to reverse this.

this is their policy: to be firm against firms. their business to be against business.

as if they'd forgotten that people work in businesses and their wages come from firms.

we instead are proud to be the party of firms and of businesses and of peoples' incomes andpeoples' jobs and peoples' livelihoods.

for when we choose to be on the side of enterprise we are choosing to be on the side of thebritish people.

this party of progress is the party of free markets and of fair markets too.

how dare the labour party attempt to give lessons on fairness.

hang on a minute.

who's the party restoring the real value of the minimum wage?

who is the party tackling abuse of zero hours contracts?

who is the party capping pay day loans?

not 13 years of labour

they were too busy capping each other.

it is us, the conservative party, who understand markets must be fair if they are to be free.

and it is this pro-business conservative chancellor who says to some of the biggest technologycompanies in the world, this today:

you are welcome here in britain with open arms.

you have the advantages of:

our skilled population to work for you;

broadband connections to deliver your services;

and our nhs to keep your employees healthy.

advantages that have to be paid for.

so while we offer some of the lowest business taxes in the world, we expect those taxes to bepaid - not avoided.

some technology companies go to extraordinary lengths to pay little or no tax here.

if you abuse our tax system, you abuse the trust of the british people.

and my message to those companies is clear:

we will put a stop to it.

low taxes, but low taxes that are paid.

part of our effort to reduce our deficit.

for our choice is that we are all in this together.

it was this government that started the global work on changing international tax rules.

this autumn we will lead the world in implementing those changes here in britain.

the future for britain is to be a low tax country where people play by the rules.

the future for britain is to be a pro-business country.

and we also have to build for that future.

big decisions on infrastructure have always been controversial and always will be.

the railways were bitterly opposed in the nineteenth century.

the motorways were opposed in the twentieth century.

let's face it, even today this country has spent forty years failing to take a decision aboutbuilding a new runway in the south east of england.

there are always one hundred reasons to stick with the past, but we need to choose the future.

we should ask ourselves what the golden boys in that statue outside would have done.

what choice would those great britons have made?

would they have said, our trains may be packed, our roads congested, our transport systemcan't cope, but we won't build any more roads or new railways?

no they would not.

would they have said, yes we mined for coal deep underground, and explored for oil beneathour seas, but we should leave the extraordinary shale gas reserves untouched beneath ourfeet?

no they would not.

would they have said that the country that built the first civil nuclear power station should notbuild anymore?

no they would not.

would they have said its ok if our children can't afford houses so long as we have them?

no they would not.

and would the golden boys who were part of an age of enlightenment that discovered thevaccine for smallpox have said:

we're not going to have any research into those genetic medicines and crops that will savecountless lives in the future?

no they would not.

we must choose the future.

we will tap the shale gas, commission nuclear power and renewables, and guarantee ourenergy for the future.

we will build the high speed rail, decide where to put a runway and support the next generationwith starter homes in a permanent help to buy.

we must learn from the past, not be the past.

decide or decline.

that is the choice.

we must choose the future.

and this future can't just be about prosperity for one corner of our country.

i grew up in london, and i am full of wonder at the way it has become a global capital,attracting the young, the talented and the ambitious from across the world.

that is a huge strength for the whole of britain.

but i am also the first chancellor for almost forty years to represent a constituency in the northof england - and i can see the risk of our capital city's dominance.

it is not healthy for our country or our economy.

the answer is not to pull down and hold back our greatest global asset - that would be crazy.

the answer is to build up the rest of our country.

to create a northern powerhouse of the cities across the pennines.

to connect up the south west.

and to put the midlands at the centre of our great manufacturing revival.

people know that the disparities between different parts of our country have grown up overmany decades under governments of all colours.

let's treat people as adults and not pretend we can reverse something like this overnight.

but equally, let's not give up and say it can't be done.

look what michael heseltine achieved in the docks of liverpool and london.

this party of progress knows what it takes to create flourishing economies.

successful businesses.

modern high speed transport.

big science investments.

top universities, and the strong leadership that comes with powerful elected mayors.

those are the ingredients of a northern powerhouse.

that is how we deliver prosperity and security for families across the nation.

and it is one of my driving missions to do everything i can to build it.

let us choose today to make reducing the gap between north and south, london and the rest,one of the central ambitions of the next conservative government.

there is one final choice we should make.

a choice this party of progress always makes.

and that is to trust people with their own money.

that's why in my budget this year i applied that philosophy with far-reaching new freedoms inthe way people can access their pensions.

these freedoms are based on the simple idea that people know better how to spend their ownmoney than governments do.

this party that gave people the right to buy their own home - is the party that is now givingpeople ownership of their own pension too.

but i want to go further.

there are still rules that say you can't pass on to the next generation any of your pension potwhen you die, without paying a punitive 55% of it in tax.

i could choose to cut this tax rate.

instead, i choose to abolish it altogether.

people who have worked and saved all their lives will be able to pass on their hard-earnedpensions to their families tax free.

effective from today.

the children and grandchildren and others who benefit will get the same tax treatment on thisincome as on any other, but only when they choose to draw it down.

freedom for people's pensions. a pension tax abolished. passing on your pension tax free.

not a promise for the next conservative government - but put in place and delivered byconservatives in government now.

we are eight months away from one of the most important general elections in a generation.

we can face it with confidence.

for we go to the people as the party of progress.

for five years britain has pursued a clear economic policy when all over europe there has beencrisis and uncertainty.

britain has been the lantern in the storm.

now we seek a new mandate as the party of jobs and security and a strong prime minister -against the party offering higher taxes, more debt and ed miliband.

we are going to offer political resolve and economic competence.

a confident future for britain as the most prosperous country in the world.

and we are going say to the british people:

choose jobs.

choose enterprise.

choose security.

choose prosperity.

choose investment.

choose fairness.

choose freedom.

choose david cameron.

choose the conservatives.

choose the future.

第5篇 英国首相卡梅伦在2019年英国保守*秋季年会英语演讲稿

i am so proud to stand here today as prime minister of four nations in one united kingdom. i was always clear about why we called that referendum. duck the fight – and our union could have been taken apart bit by bit. take it on – and we had the chance to settle the question. this party has always confronted the big issues for the sake of our country. and now…england, scotland, wales, northern ireland…we are one people in one union and everyone here can be proud of that. and we can all agree, during that campaign a new star – a new conservative star – was born…someone who’s going to take our message to every corner of scotland: our very own ruth davidson.

the lead-up to that referendum was the most nerve-wracking week of my life. but i can tell youthe best moment of my year. it was june 6th, the 70th anniversary of d day. sam and i werein bayeux, in france, with my constituent, patrick churchill…no relation to the great man – buta great man himself. patrick is 91 years old – and 70 years ago, he was there fighting fascism,helping to liberate that town. i’ll never forget the tears in his eyes as he talked about thecomrades he left behind…or the pride they all felt in the job they had done. as we walked alongthe streets he pointed out where he had driven his tank…and all along the roadside there werefrench children waving flags – union jacks – the grandchildren of the people he had liberated.patrick’s here today with his wife karin – and i know, like me, you’ll want to give them thewarmest welcome.

when people have seen our flag – in some of the most desperate times in history – they haveknown what it stands for. freedom. justice. standing up for what is right. they have known thisisn’t any old country. this is a special country. june 6th this summer. normandy. i was soproud of great britain that day. and here, today, i want to set out how in this generation, wecan build a country whose future we can all be proud of. how we can secure a better future forall. how we can build a britain that everyone is proud to call home.

the heirs to those who fought on the beaches of northern france are those fighting inafghanistan today. for thirteen years, young men and women have been serving our countrythere. this year, the last of our combat troops come home – and i know everyone here willwant to show how grateful and how proud we are of everyone who served. but the end of theafghan mission does not mean the end of the threat. the threat is islamist extremistterrorism – and it has found a new, hellish crucible – with isil, in iraq and syria. these peopleare evil, pure and simple. they kill children; rape women; threaten non-believers withgenocide; behead journalists and aid workers. some people seem to think we can opt out ofthis. we can’t. as i speak, british servicemen and women are flying in the skies over iraq. theysaw action yesterday. and there will be troops on the frontline – but they will be iraqis, kurds,and syrians…fighting for the safe and democratic future they deserve.

we are acting in partnership with a range of countries – including those from the region.because let’s be clear: there is no “walk on by” option. unless we deal with isil, they will dealwith us, bringing terror and murder to our streets. as always with this party, we will dowhatever it takes to keep our country safe. and to those who have had all the advantages ofbeing brought up in britain, but who want to go and fight for isil – let me say this. if you tryto travel to syria or iraq, we will use everything at our disposal to stop you: taking away yourpassport; prosecuting, convicting, imprisoning you…and if you’re there already – evenpreventing you from coming back. you have declared your allegiance. you are an enemy of theuk – and you should expect to be treated as such.

when it comes to keeping britain safe, i had one man by my side for four years. when he was ateenager, he didn’t only address the tory party conference…he read hansard in bed…and hada record collection consisting of one album by dire straits and dozens of speeches by winstonchurchill. all i can say is this: that boy became a fine parliamentarian…a brilliant foreignsecretary…our greatest living yorkshireman…and someone to whom i owe an enormous debtof gratitude: william hague.

william, there’s one more task i want you to carry out: bringing fairness to our constitution.during that referendum campaign we made a vow to the scottish people that they will getmore powers – and we will keep that vow. but here’s my vow to the people of england, walesand northern ireland. i know the system is unfair. i know that you are asking: if scotland canvote separately on things like tax, spending and welfare….why can’t england, wales andnorthern ireland do the same? i know you want this answered. so this is my vow: english votesfor english laws – the conservatives will deliver it.

we’ve delivered a lot these past four years…but we’ve had to do it all in a coalition government.believe me: coalition was not what i wanted to do; it’s what i had to do. and i know what iwant next. to be back here in october 2019 delivering conservative policies…based onconservative values…leading a majority conservative government.

so where do we want to take our country? where do i want to take our country? during thesefour years, i hope that the british people have come to know me a little. i’m not a complicatedman. i believe in some simple things. families come first. they are the way you make a nationstrong from the inside out. i care deeply about those who struggle to get by…but i believe thebest thing to do is help them stand on their own two feet – and no, that’s not saying “you’re onyour own”, but “we are on your side, helping you be all you can.” and i believe in something forsomething; not something for nothing. those who do the right thing, put the effort in, whowork and build communities – these are the people who should be rewarded. all of this isunderpinned by a deep patriotism.

i love this country – and my goal is this: to make britain a country that everyone is proud tocall home. that doesn’t just mean having the fastest-growing economy, or climbing someinternational league table. i didn’t come into politics to make the lines on the graphs go in theright direction. i want to help you live a better life. and it comes back to those things i believe.a britain that everyone is proud to call home is a britain where hard work is really rewarded.not a free-for-all, but a chance for all…the chance of a job, a home, a good start in life…whoeveryou are, wherever you are from. and by the way – you never pull one person up by pullinganother one down. so this party doesn’t do the politics of envy and class warfare…we believe inaspiration and helping people get on in life – and what’s more, we’re proud of it.

the past four years have been about laying the foundations for that britain. the next five willbe about finishing the job. put another way – if our economic plan for the past four years hasbeen about our country – and saving it from economic ruin…our plan for the next five years willbe about you, and your family – and helping you get on. but conservatives know this. nothingcomes easy. there’s no reward without effort; no wealth without work; no success withoutsacrifice…and we credit the british people with knowing these things too.

other parties preach to you about a brave new world…we understand you have to start withthe real world and make it better. so let other politicians stand on stages like this and promisean easy life. not me. i am here today to set out our conservative commitment for the next fiveyears.

if you want to provide for yourself and your family, you’ll have the security of a job…but only ifwe stick to our long-term economic plan. if you work hard, we will cut your taxes…but only ifwe keep on cutting the deficit, so we can afford to do that. for those wanting to buy a home,yes – we will help you get on that housing ladder…but only if we take on the vested interests,and build more homes – however hard that is. we will make sure your children get a greateducation; the best education…but only if we keep taking on everyone who gets in the way ofhigh standards. for those retiring, we will make sure you get a decent pension; and realrewards for a life of work…but only if we as a country accept we all have to work a bit longer andsave a bit more.

it’s pretty simple really: a good job, a nice home, more money at the end of the month, adecent education for your children, a safe and secure retirement. a country where if you putin, you get out. a britain everyone is proud to call home. and a real long-term plan to getthere. it starts with more decent jobs. and look how far we’ve come. today there are 1 million800 thousand more jobs in our country than there were in 2019. we are creating more jobshere in britain than in the whole of europe put together. 1.8 million jobs. you know – whenbritain is getting back to work, it can only mean one thing…the conservatives are back ingovernment.

so here’s our commitment for the next five years. what the economists would call: the highestemployment rate of any major economy. what i call: full employment in britain. just think ofwhat that would mean. those who can work, able to work…standing on their own two feet,looking at their children and thinking “i am providing for you.” we can get there – but only ifwe stick to our plan.

companies are coming from all over the world to invest and create jobs here. that’s nothappened by accident. it’s because they see a government rolling out the red carpet for them,cutting their red tape, cutting their taxes. so here is a commitment: with the nextconservative government – we will always have the most competitive corporate taxes in theg20…lower than germany, lower than japan, lower than the united states. but george saidsomething really important in that brilliant speech on monday. a message to those globalcompanies: we have cut your taxes – now you must pay what you owe.

we must stick to the plan on welfare too. with us, if you’re out of work, you will getunemployment benefit…but only if you go to the job centre, update your cv, attendinterviews and accept the work you’re offered. as i said: no more something-for-nothing. andlook at the results: 800,000 fewer people on the main out-of-work benefits. in the next fiveyears we’re going to go further.

you heard it this week – we won’t just aim to lower youth unemployment; we aim to abolishit. we’ve made clear decisions. we will reduce the benefits cap, and we will say to those 21 andunder: no longer will you have the option of leaving school and going straight into a life onbenefits. you must earn or learn. and we will help by funding three million apprenticeships.let’s say to our young people: a life on welfare is no life at all…instead: here’s some hope;here’s a chance to get on and make something of yourself.

what do our opponents have to say? they have opposed every change to welfare we’ve made –and i expect they’ll oppose this too. they sit there pontificating about poverty – yet they’rethe ones who left a generation to rot on welfare. and while we’re at it: let’s compare records.under labour, unemployment rose. with us, unemployment is falling faster than at any timefor 25 years. under labour, inequality widened. with us, it’s narrowed. those are the facts. solet’s say it loudly and proudly…with britain getting off welfare and back to work…the real partyof compassion and social justice today is here in this hall – the conservative party.

it’s not just the job numbers that matter – it is the reality of working life for people in ourcountry…especially the lowest-paid. anyone should be free to take on different jobs so they canget on. but when companies employ staff on zero hours contracts and then stop them fromgetting work elsewhere, that’s not a free market – it is a fixed market. in a britain thateveryone is proud to call home, people are employed, they are not used. those exclusive zerohours contracts that left people unable to build decent lives for themselves – we will scrapthem.

but there’s still more injustice when it comes to work, and it’s even more shocking. criminalgangs trafficking people halfway around the world and making them work in the mostdisgusting conditions. i’ve been to see these – houses on terraced streets, built for families offour, cramming in 15 people like animals. to those crime lords who think they can get awaywith it, i say no: not in this country; not with this party…with our modern slavery bill we’recoming after you and we’re going to put a stop to it once and for all.

once you have a job, i want you to take home more of your own money. if you put in, youshould get out – not hand so much of it to the taxman. that’s why these past four years,despite everything, i’ve made sure we provide some relief to taxpayers in our country –especially the poorest. no income tax until you earn £10,000 a year – and from next april, £10,500 a year. three million people taken out of income tax altogether. a tax cut for 25million more. and our commitment to you for the next five years: we want to cut more of yourtaxes. but we can only do that if we keep on cutting the deficit. it’s common sense – tax cutsneed to be paid for.

so here’s our plan. we are going to balance the books by 2019, and start putting aside moneyfor the future. to do it we’ll need to find £25 billion worth of savings in the first two years of thenext parliament. that’s a lot of money, but it’s doable. £25 billion is actually just three per centof what government spends each year. it is a quarter of the savings we have found in thisparliament.

i am confident we will find the savings we need through spending cuts alone. we will see thejob through and get back into the black. and as we do that, i am clear about something else.we need tax cuts for hardworking people.

and here and now, i have a specific commitment. today, the minimum wage reaches £6.50an hour, and before long we’ll reach our next goal of £7. i can tell you now that a futureconservative government will raise the tax-free personal allowance from £10,500 to £12,500.that will take 1 million more of the lowest paid workers out of income tax – and will give a taxcut to 30 million more. so with us, if you work 30 hours a week on minimum wage, you will payno income tax at all. nothing. zero. zilch. lower taxes for our hardworking people…that’s what icall a britain that everyone is proud to call home. but we will do something else.

the 40p tax rate was only supposed to be paid by the most well-off people in our country…butin the past couple of decades, far too many have been dragged into it: teachers, police officers.so let me tell you this today. i want to take action that’s long overdue, and bring back somefairness to tax. with a conservative government, we will raise the threshold at which peoplepay the 40p rate. it’s currently £41,900…in the next parliament we will raise it to £50,000.

so here’s our commitment to the british people: no income tax if you are on minimum wage.a 12 and a half thousand pound tax-free personal allowance for millions of hardworkingpeople. and you only pay 40p tax when you earn £50,000. so let the message go out: with theconservatives, if you work hard and do the right thing…we say you should keep more of yourown money to spend as you choose. that’s what our long-term economic plan means for you.

and while i’m on the subject of the big economic questions our country faces – on spending, ontax – did you hear ed miliband last week? he spoke for over an hour, but didn’t mention thedeficit once. not once. he said he ‘forgot’ to mention it. ed – people forget their car keys, schoolkids sometimes forget their homework…but if you want to be prime minister of this country, youcannot forget the biggest challenge we face.

a few weeks ago, ed balls said that in thirteen years of government, labour had made ‘somemistakes’. ‘some mistakes’. excuse me? you were the people who left britain with the biggestpeacetime deficit in history…who gave us the deepest recession since the war…who destroyedour pensions system, bust our banking system…who left a million young people out of work,five million on out-of-work benefits – and hundreds of billions of debt. some mistakes? labourwere just one big mistake.

and five years on, they still want to spend more, borrow more, tax more. it’s the same oldlabour, and you know what? they say that madness is doing the same thing over and overagain but expecting different results. well i say: madness is voting for this high spending, hightaxing, deficit ballooning shower and expecting anything other than economic disaster.

in a country that everyone is proud to call home, you should be able to buy a home – if you’rewilling to save. it shouldn’t be some impossible dream. but we inherited a situation where itwas. young people watched location, location, location not as a reality show – but as fantasy.we couldn’t solve this housing crisis without some difficult decisions. the planning system wasstuck in the mud – so we reformed it…and last year, nearly a quarter of a million houses weregiven planning permission. young people needed massive deposits they just couldn’tafford…so we brought in help to buy.

of course there were those who criticised it…usually speaking from the comfort of the homethey’d bought years ago. but let’s see what actually happened. they said help to buy wouldjust help people in london…but 94 per cent of buyers live outside the capital. they said it wouldhelp people with houses already…but four-fifths are first-time buyers. they said it would cause ahousing bubble…but as the bank of england has said, it hasn’t. so here’s our renewedcommitment to first-time buyers: if you’re prepared to work and save, we will help you get aplace of your own.

this conference we have announced a landmark new policy. it’s called starter homes. we’regoing to build 100,000 new homes – and they’ll be twenty percent cheaper than normal. buthere’s the crucial part. buy-to-let landlords won’t be able to snap them up.wealthy foreignerswon’t be able to buy them. just first-time buyers under the age of 40. homes built for you,homes made for you – the conservative party, once again, the party of home ownership in ourcountry.

in a britain that everyone is proud to call home, you wouldn’t be able to tell a child’s gcses bytheir postcode or what their parents do. there must be a great education for every child. amonth ago i had this wonderful moment. florence is now 4 and just starting school, so for thefirst time, all three of my children are at the same primary school. it was such a joy to takethem to school together; florence clinging on for dear life until she saw a new friend and rushedoff to her classroom. it’s hard to describe what a relief it is as a parent to find a decent schoolfor your child. it shouldn’t be a lottery.

what we have in our state primary in london i want for every child in the country. and we’regetting there. more children in good or outstanding schools. more children studying science,languages and history. a new curriculum – with five year olds learning fractions; eleven yearsolds coding computers. and the biggest change is the culture. teachers who feel like leadersagain. who say: this is our school, we’re proud of it, the children must behave in it, we will nottolerate failure in it. we’ve come so far – and make no mistake – the biggest risk to all this islabour. you know what drives me the most mad about them? the hypocrisy.

tristram hunt, their shadow education secretary – like me – had one of the best educationsmoney can buy. but guess what? he won’t allow it for your children. he went to anindependent school that wasn’t set up by a local authority…but no, he doesn’t want charitiesand parents to set up schools for your children. he had the benefit of world-class teachers whohappened not to have a government certificate…but no, he wants to stop people like that fromteaching your children. i tell you – tristram hunt and i might both have been educated atsome of the best schools in our country. but here’s the difference: you, tristram – like the restof the labour party – want to restrict those advantages…i want to spread them to every childin britain.

we know labour’s real problem on education. every move they make, they’ve got to take theircue from the unions. that’s who they really represent. the unions. well, i’ve got a bit of newsfor you. it’s not something we’ve ever said before. we in this party are a trade union too.

i’ll tell you who we represent. this party is the union for hardworking parents…the father whoreads his children stories at night because he wants them to learn…the mother who works allthe hours god sends to give her children the best start. this party is the trade union forchildren from the poorest estates and the most chaotic homes. this party is the union for theyoung woman who wants an apprenticeship…or the teenagers who want to make something oftheir lives…this is who we represent, these are the people we’re fighting for…and that’s why oneducation we won’t let labour drag us back to square one – we’re going to finish what we havebegun. a real education isn’t just about exams. our young people must know this is a countrywhere if you put in, you will get out.

now i’ve got in trouble for talking about twitter before, but let me put it like this. i want acountry where young people aren’t endlessly thinking: ‘what can i say in 140 characters?’ but‘what does my character say about me?’ that’s why i’m so proud of national citizen service.every summer, thousands of young people are coming together to volunteer and serve theircommunity. we started this. people come up to me on the street and say all sorts ofthings…believe me – all sorts of things…but one thing i hear a lot is parents saying “thank youfor what this has done for my child.” i want this to become a rite of passage for all teenagers inour country. so i can tell you this: the next conservative government will guarantee a placeon national citizen service for every teenager in our country.

that rule: that if you put in, you should get out…more than anywhere it should apply to thosewho want dignity and security in retirement. but for years it didn’t. there were three greatwrongs. wrong number one: the pension credit that was basically a means test – the more yousaved, the less you got. wrong number two: compulsory annuities that meant you couldn’tspend your own money as you wished. wrong number three: when people passed away, thepension they had saved was taxed at 55 per cent before it went to their family.

three wrongs – and we are putting them right. the means test – it’s going. in its place: a newsingle-tier pension of £142 a week…every penny you have saved during your working life, youwill keep. those compulsory annuities – scrapped…giving you complete control over yourprivate pension. as for that 55 per cent tax on your pension? you heard it this week: we’ve cutit to zero per cent. conservative values in action.

when it comes to our elderly, one thing matters above everything. knowing the nhs is therefor you. from labour last week, we heard the same old rubbish about the conservatives andthe nhs. spreading complete and utter lies. i just think: how dare you. it was the labour partywho gave us the scandal at mid staffs…elderly people begging for water and dying of neglect.and for me, this is personal. i am someone who has relied on the nhs – whose family knowsmore than most how important it is…who knows what it’s like to go to hospital night after nightwith a child in your arms…knowing that when you get there, you have people who will care forthat child and love that child like their own. how dare they suggest i would ever put that at riskfor other people’s children?…how dare they frighten those who are relying on the nhs rightnow? it might be the only thing that gets a cheer at their party conference but it is franklypathetic.

we in this party can be proud of what we’ve done. we came in and protected the nhs budget.funding six and a half thousand more doctors – 3300 more nurses…a cancer drugs fund tosave lives…more people hearing those two magic words: “all clear”. and think of the amazingthings around the corner.

from the country that unravelled dna, we are now mapping it for each individual…it’s called thegenome, and i’ve got a model of one of the first ones on my desk in downing street. crackingthis code could mean curing rare genetic diseases and saving lives. our nhs is leading theworld on this incredible technology. i understand very personally the difference it couldmake. when you have a child who’s so ill and the doctors can’t work out what he’s got or why –you’d give anything to know. the investment we’re making will mean that more parents havethose answers – and hopefully the cures that go with them. and let’s be clear: all this is onlypossible because we have managed our economy responsibly. that is why i can tell you this: wewill do it again.

the next conservative government will protect the nhs budget and continue to invest more.because we know this truth…something labour will never understand – and we will neverforget…you can only have a strong nhs if you have a strong economy.

a britain that everyone is proud to call home. a place where reward follows effort; where if youput in, you get out. but it also means a country that is strong in the world – in control of itsown destiny…and yes – that includes controlling immigration. to me, this is about working onall fronts. it’s about getting our own people fit to work. fixing welfare – so a life on the dole isnot an option. fixing education – so we turn out young people with skills to do the jobs we arecreating.

and yes – we need controlled borders and an immigration system that puts the british peoplefirst. that’s why we’ve capped economic migration from outside the eu…shut down 700 boguscolleges – that were basically visa factories…kicked out people who don’t belong here, like abuqatada…and let’s hear it for the woman who made it happen: our crime-busting homesecretary, theresa may.

but we know the bigger issue today is migration from within the eu. immediate access to ourwelfare system. paying benefits to families back home. employment agencies signing people upfrom overseas and not recruiting here. numbers that have increased faster than we in thiscountry wanted…at a level that was too much for our communities, for our labour markets. all ofthis has to change – and it will be at the very heart of my renegotiation strategy for europe.

britain, i know you want this sorted so i will go to brussels, i will not take no for an answer andwhen it comes to free movement – i will get what britain needs. anyone who thinks i can’t orwon’t deliver this – judge me by my record. i’m the first prime minister to veto a treaty…thefirst prime minister to cut the european budget…and yes i pulled us out of those europeanbail-out schemes as well. around that table in europe they know i say what i mean, and meanwhat i say. so we’re going to go in as a country, get our powers back, fight for our nationalinterest…and yes – we’ll put it to a referendum…in or out – it will be your choice…and let themessage go out from this hall: it is only with a conservative government that you will get thatchoice.

of course, it’s not just the european union that needs sorting out – it’s the european court ofhuman rights. when that charter was written, in the aftermath of the second world war, itset out the basic rights we should respect. but since then, interpretations of that charter haveled to a whole lot of things that are frankly wrong. rulings to stop us deporting suspectedterrorists. the suggestion that you’ve got to apply the human rights convention even on thebattle-fields of helmand. and now – they want to give prisoners the vote. i’m sorry, i just don’tagree.

our parliament – the british parliament – decided they shouldn’t have that right. this is thecountry that wrote magna carta…the country that time and again has stood up for humanrights…whether liberating europe from fascism or leading the charge today against sexualviolence in war. let me put this very clearly: we do not require instruction on this fromjudges in strasbourg. so at long last, with a conservative government after the next election,this country will have a new british bill of rights…to be passed in our parliament…rooted in ourvalues…and as for labour’s human rights act? we will scrap it, once and for all.

so that’s what we offer: a britain that everyone is proud to call home. and a very clear plan toget there. over the next five years we will deliver the following things: 3 millionapprenticeships. full employment. the most competitive corporate taxes in the g20.eliminating the budget deficit through spending cuts, not tax rises. building 100,000 newstarter homes. letting you pass on your pension tax-free. ring-fencing nhs spending so not apenny is cut. renegotiating in europe. delivering that in-out referendum. scrapping the humanrights act. no income tax until you earn £12,500. no 40p tax rate until you earn £50,000.

if you want those things, vote for me. if you don’t, vote for the other guy. and let’s be clear.this is a straight fight. it doesn’t matter whether parliament is hung, drawn or quartered, thereis only one real choice. the conservatives or labour. me in downing street, or ed miliband indowning street. if you vote ukip – that’s really a vote for labour. here’s a thought…on 7th mayyou could go to bed with nigel farage, and wake up with ed miliband.

so this is the big question for that election. on the things that matter in your life, who do youreally trust? when it comes to your job…do you trust labour – who wrecked our economy – orthe conservatives, who have made this one of the fastest-growing economies in the west?when it comes to britain’s future, who do you trust? labour – the party of something-for-nothing, and human wrongs under the banner of human rights…or the conservatives – whobelieve in something for something, and reward for hard work? who do you trust?…the party ofbig debt; big spending, big borrowing…or the party – our party – of the first pay cheque, thefirst chance, the first home…the one that is delivering more security, more opportunity, morehope …the one that is making this country great again…yes, our party, the conservative party.

we’re making britain proud again. look what we are showing the world. not just a country thatis paying down its debts…and going from the deepest recession since the war to the fastest-growing major advanced economy in the world…but at the same time: a country that has keptits promises to the poorest in the world…that is leading not following on climate change…andthat’s just saved our union in one of the greatest shows of democracy the world has ever seen.

we’re making britain proud again. our exports to china doubling…our car industrybooming…our aerospace expanding…our manufacturing growing… we’re making britain proudagain. car engines – not imported from germany, but built down the road in wolverhampton.new oil rigs – not made in china, but built on the tyne. record levels of employment…recordnumbers of apprenticeships…britain regaining its purpose, its pride and its confidence.

we’re at a moment where all the hard work is finally paying off…and the light is coming up aftersome long dark days. go back now and we’ll lose all we’ve done…falling back into the shadowswhen we could be striding into the sun. that’s the question next may. do you want to go backto square one – or finish what we’ve begun?

i don’t claim to be a perfect leader. but i am your public servant, standing here, wanting tomake our country so much better – for your children and mine. i love this country, and i will domy duty by it. we’ve got the track record, the right team…to take this plan for our country andturn it into a plan for you.

i think of the millions of people going out to work, wiping the ice off the windscreen on awinter’s morning…raising their children as well they can, working as hard as they can…doing itfor a better future, to make a good life for them and their families. that is the british spirit –there in our ordinary days as well as our finest hours. this is a great country and we can begreater still. because history is not written for us, but by us, in the decisions we make today…and that starts next may.

so britain: what’s it going to be? i say: let’s not go back to square one. let’s finish what wehave begun. let’s build a britain we are proud to call home…for you, for your family, foreveryone.

第6篇 奥巴马总统在2019年《华尔街日报》ceo理事会年会英语演讲稿

the president: thank you so much. (applause.) everybody, please have a seat. thankyou.

well, it is wonderful to be here,and i always look forward to an opportunity to speak tosome of our topbusinesses across the country who are hiring people, investing inamerica,making the economy run. and many of youi’ve had a chance to interact with before. asyou know, oftentimes when i do something like this, i want to spendmore time answeringquestions and having a conversation than giving any formalremarks. let me just provide alittlebit of an introduction.

obviously, over the last coupleof months, most of the oxygen in this town has beenconsumed with two things --one, the government shutdown and the possibility of default thatwas ultimatelyresolved; and the second has been the rollout of the affordable care act andthefact that my website is not working the way it’s supposed to. and it’s entirely legitimate thatthose havebeen issues of great concern.

the impact of the shutdown andthe threat of default i think not only did some significantdamage to theeconomy at a time when we didn’t need self-inflicted wounds, but it also spoketosome of the larger problems we’ve seen here in washington, and the sense ofdysfunction andthe seeming incapacity of both parties in congress to worktogether to advance an agendathat’s going to help us grow.

with respect to the affordablecare act, i think people are legitimately concerned becausewe have a majorproblem with health care in this country -- 41 million people withouthealthinsurance, a lot of people underinsured. and once again, how we fix a health care systemthat’s been broken fortoo many people for too long i think ends up speaking to how muchconfidence wehave in government and whether we still have the capacity, collectively, tobringabout changes that are going to be good for our economy, good for ourbusinesses, good for theamerican people.

i do want to say, though, thatbeyond the headlines, we have made real progress in theeconomy, and sometimesthat hasn’t gotten enough attention. some of the tough decisions thatwe made early on have paid off --decisions that helped us not only recover from a crisis, butbegin to lay astronger foundation for future growth.

we refocused on manufacturingexports, and today, our businesses sell more goods andservices made in americathan ever before around the world. aftera decade of shedding jobs,our manufacturing sector has now added about half amillion new jobs, and it’s led by anamerican auto industry that has comeroaring back after decades of decline.

we decided to reverse ourdependence on foreign oil, and today, we generate morerenewable energy thanever before and more natural gas than anybody in the world. and for thefirst time in nearly 20 years,america now produces more of our own oil than we buy from othercountries.

when i took office, we invested afraction of what other countries did in wirelessinfrastructure, and today, it’sup nearly 50 percent, helping companies unleash jobs,innovation and a boomingapp economy that’s created more than 500,000 jobs. when i tookoffice, only 5 percent of theworld’s smartphones ran on american operating systems. today,more than 80 percent do.

and it’s not just in thehigh-tech economy that we’re seeing progress. for example,american farmers are on pace to have one of their bestyears in decades, and they haveconsistently been able to export more, makemore profits and help restore rural economiesthan when we came into office.

and, yes, we decided to take on abroken health care system. and even though the rollout ofthe new health caremarketplace has been rough, to say the least, about half a millionamericansare now poised to gain health care coverage beginning january 1st. that’s after onlya month of sign-up. we also have seen health care costs growingat the slowest rate in 50 years.employer-based health costs are growing at about one-third of the rateof a decade ago, andthat has an impact on your bottom line.

and after years oftrillion-dollar deficits, we reined in spending, wound down two wars, andbeganto change a tax code that i believe was too skewed towards the wealthiest amongus atthe expense of the middle class. and since i took office, we have now cut our deficits by morethan half.

add it all up, and businesseslike yours have created 7.8 million new jobs over the past 44months. we’ve gone farther and recovered faster thanmost other advanced nations. and so inalot of ways, america is poised for a breakout. we are in a good position to compete aroundthe world in the 21stcentury.

the question is, are we going torealize that potential? and that meansthat we’ve still gotsome more work to do. our stock markets and corporate profits are soaring, but we’ve gottomake sure that this remains a country where everyone who works hard can getahead. andthat means we’ve still got toaddress long-term unemployment. we stillhave to addressstagnant wages and stagnant incomes.

and frankly, we’ve got to stopgoverning by crisis here in this town. because if it weren’t forwashington’s dysfunction, i think all of usagree we’d be a lot further along. theshutdown andthe threat of default harmed our jobs market, they cost oureconomy about $5 billion, andeconomists predict it will slow our gdp growththis quarter -- and it didn’t need to happen. itwas self-inflicted. we shouldnot be injuring ourselves every few months. we should be investingin ourselves. and in a sensible world, that starts with a budget that cuts what we don’tneed,closes wasteful loopholes, and helps us afford to invest in the thingsthat we know will helpbusinesses like yours and the economy as a whole --education, infrastructure, basic researchand development.

we would have a grand bargain formiddle-class jobs that combines tax reform with afinancing mechanism that letsus create jobs, rebuilding infrastructure that your businessesdepend on, butwe haven’t gotten as much take-up from the other side as we’d like to see sofar.we have the opportunity forbipartisan authority to negotiate the best trade deals possible sobusinessesand workers can take advantage of new markets that are opening up aroundtheworld. we haven’t seen the kind oftake-up from the other side that we’d like to see so far.

we’ve got the opportunity to fixa broken immigration system that strengthens oureconomy and our nationalsecurity. the good news here is thesenate has already passed abipartisan bill that economists say would grow oureconomy by $1.4 trillion and shrink ourdeficits by nearly a trillion over thenext two decades. you wouldn’t turn downa deal that good,and congress shouldn’t either. so i’m hoping that speaker boehner and thehouse ofrepresentatives can still work with us to get that done.

and we need to be going all outto prepare our kids and our workers for the demands of a21st-centuryeconomy. i’ve proposed giving everychild an early start at success by making high-quality preschool available toevery four-year-old in america. we knowthat you get more bangfor the buck when it comes to early childhood educationthan just about anything else, andyou’ve got great examples around thecountry, oftentimes in red states, that are doing just that.we need to make that same investment.

we’re working to bring down thecosts of a college degree so more young people can get ahigher education. and one thing that i’m very excited about --and this has been a goodexample of a public-private partnership -- is the ideaof redesigning our high schools to makesure that more young people gethands-on training and develop the skills that they need,particularly in math,science and engineering, that businesses are looking for. and in fact, todaywe’re announcing acompetitive grant program that will encourage more high schools topartner withcolleges and local businesses to better prepare our kids for college or acareer. andin december, i’ll bebringing together college presidents and other leaders to figure out waystohelp more low-income students attend and to succeed in college.

so just to sum up, my basicmessage is this: we know what thechallenges are. we knowwhat thesolutions are. some of them are tough,but what’s holding us back is not a lack of goodpolicy ideas or even what usedto be considered good bipartisan policy ideas. we just have tobreak through the stubborn cycle of crisis politics andstart working together. moreobstruction,more brinkmanship won’t help anybody. it doesn’t help folks politically. my understanding isnobody in this town isdoing particularly well at the moment when it comes to the opinions oftheamerican people, but it certainly doesn’t help anybody economically.

on many of the issues, i thinkyou and i would agree, and i want you to know that i’mrooting for yoursuccess, and i look forward to making sure that we are able in theremainingthree years that i’m president to work together to not only improve thebusinessclimate, but also improve the prospects for americans all across thecountry who have beentreading water, feel like they’re losing ground, areanxious about the future and their children’sfutures, but i think are stillhopeful and still possess that fundamental american optimism. ifthey see leadership working across theboard on their behalf, then i’m confident that we canmake enormous progress.

so with that, why don’t we getjerry up here and i’ll start answering his questions. i hope headds some input. (laughter.) if he starts asking me about whathappened to the kansas citychiefs, i’m not sure i’ll have a good answer forthat one. (applause.)

well, thank you, mr. president. let me start by thanking you officially forjoining us today. ithink you probablysee a lot of familiar faces out there, most friendly, most of them. and i wouldalso note that you’re gettinghere a little late. congressman paulryan is coming later. he isgoing to gethere a little early. so if you guysoverlap a little bit, maybe we can just get someproblems solved righthere. what do you think?

the president: let’s do it. (laughter.) let’s do it.

it’s your chance. we have talked amongst ourselves or tried tosort of take the sense of theroom. so i’mgoing to try to reflect some of the conversations that have been going on hereinthe questions i’m going to ask you. you’ll not be stunned that i’m going to ask you abouthealth care first.

you indicated there and you’veindicated publicly quite clearly that the rollout has beendifficult. what do you think you’ve learned from thisexperience about the government’s abilityto do this sort of thing, about thelaw itself, or about your own administration?

the president: well, there are a couple of things. number one is that this has been abigproblem for a very long time and so it was always going to be challenging notjust to pass alaw, but also to implement it. there’s a reason why, despite a century of talking about it,nobody hadbeen able to successfully try to deal with some of the underlying problems inthehealth care system.

the good news is that many of theelements of the affordable care act are already in placeand are workingexactly the way they’re supposed to. somaking sure that consumers who haveemployer-based health insurance are gettinga better deal and that are protected from some ofthe fine print that left themin the lurch when they actually got sick -- that’s in place. makingsure that young people under the ageof 26 can stay on their parents’ plan -- that’s helped 3million childrenalready. that’s making adifference. helping seniors to getbetter prescriptiondrug prices -- that’s already helped millions of seniorsand billions of dollars in savings. rebatesfor people who see insurance companies who are not spendingenough on actual care, more onadministrative costs or profits, they’re gettingrebates. they may not know it’s theaffordablecare act that’s giving them rebates, but it’s happening. so there were a number of things thatwerealready in place over the last three years that got implemented effectively.

the other thing that hasn’t beentalked about a lot is cost. there was a lot of skepticismwhen we passed theaffordable care act that we were going to be giving a lot of people care butweweren’t doing anything about the underlying costs. and, in fact, over the last three years,we’veseen health care costs grow at the slowest pace in 50 years. and that affects the bottomlines ofeverybody here.

and there are a lot of smartdelivery system reforms that slowly across the system are beingimplemented andthey’re making a big difference. andthat’s saving us money. that’s why, bytheway, some of the projections that in terms of what the affordable care actwould do to deficitshave actually proved even better than we had originallyexpected.

what i have learned, though, withrespect to setting up these marketplaces -- which areessentially mechanismswhere people who are currently in the individual market or don’t havehealthinsurance at all can join together, shop, and insurance companies will competefor theirbusiness -- setting those things up is very challenging justmechanically.

the good news is that choice andcompetition has actually worked and insurers came in withbids that were evenlower than people expected -- about 16 percent lower than had originallybeenprojected.

the challenge has been justmaking sure that consumers are actually able to get on awebsite, see thosechoices, and shop. and i think that weprobably underestimated thecomplexities of building out a website that neededto work the way it should.

there is a larger problem that iprobably -- speak personally, but also as theadministration -- could haveidentified earlier, and that is the way the federal government doesprocurementand does it is just generally not very efficient. in fact, there’s probably no biggergapbetween the private sector and the public sector than it.

and we’ve seen that in, forexample, the va and the department of defense trying to dealwith electronicmedical records for our servicemen as they move into civilian life. most of thatstuff is still done on paper. we’ve spent billions of dollars -- i’m notsaying “we” as in myadministration, i mean we’ve now had about a decade ofexperimentation, spent billions ofdollars and it’s still not working the wayit should.

so what we probably needed to doon the front end was to blow up how we procure for it,especially on a systemthis complicated. we did not do thatsuccessfully. now, we are gettingitfixed, but it would have been better to do it on the front end rather than theback end.

and the last point i’ll make isthat in terms of expectation setting, there’s no doubt that inan environmentin which we had to fight tooth and nail to get this passed, it ended upbeingpassed on a partisan basis -- not for lack of trying, because i met with anawful lot ofrepublicans to try to get them to go along -- but because therewas just ideological resistanceto the idea of dealing with the uninsured andpeople with preexisting conditions. there was aprice to that, and it was that what was already going to behard was operating within a verydifficult political environment. and we should have anticipated that thatwould create arockier rollout than if democrats and republicans were bothinvested in success.

one of the problems we’ve had isone side of capitol hill is invested in failure, and thatmakes, i think, thekind of iterative process of fixing glitches as they come up and fine-tuningthe law more challenging. but i’moptimistic that we can get it fixed.

well, that’s the question i was going toask next. is it possible you’ve lostenough time hereand enough potential customers in the exchanges that you’renot going to reach the criticalmass of signups that you need to make themarketplace work? is that a danger thatyou have toworry about right now?

the president: well, it’s something that we have to payattention to. but keep in mindthat thismodel of marketplaces was based on what was done in massachusetts, andtheexperience in massachusetts was that in the first month, 153 or 163 people signedup out ofan ultimate 36,000. it wasless than 1 percent signed up in that first month -- partly becausebuyinginsurance is a complicated process for a lot of people. when they have more choices, itmeans thatthey’re going to take more time.

there’s no doubt that we’ve lostsome time, but the website is getting better each week. bythe end of this month, it will befunctioning for the majority of people who are using it. they’llbe able to shop, see what theirchoices are. the prices are good. the prices are not changingduring the openenrollment period that goes out until march. and so i think that we’re going tohave time to catch up.

what’s also been expressed as aconcern is the mix of people that sign up. so we mightend up having millions of people sign up; they’re happy withtheir new coverage, but we’ve gotmore people who are older, more likely to getsick than younger and healthier. we’vegot tomonitor that carefully. we alwaysanticipated, though, that younger folks would be the last folksin, justbecause -- it’s been a while since you and i were young -- but as i recall, youdon’t thinkthat you’re going to get sick at that time.

so, look, i am confident that themodel that we’ve built, which works off of the existingprivate insurancesystem, is one that will succeed. we aregoing to have to, a, fix the website soeverybody feels confident aboutthat. we’re going to have to obviouslyre-market and re-brand,and that will be challenging in this politicalenvironment.

but keep in mind, in the firstmonth we also had 12 million people visit the site. thedemand is there. there are 41 million people who don’t havehealth insurance. the folks intheindividual market, many of them are going to get a much better deal in themarketplaces.and so we’ve just got tokeep on improving the customer experience and make sure that we’refending offefforts not to fix the problem -- because if somebody wants to help us fix it,i’m allgame, but fending off efforts to completely undermine it.

let me turn to the economy, the broadereconomy, probably the predominant concern ofpeople in this room. we seem to be stuck in an economic growthpattern of okay, but not greatgrowth. your friend, larry summers, was here earlier today and said essentiallythe problem orone of the problems is that the system can’t do two things atonce. it can’t cut deficits andspurgrowth. it needs to do one or the otherright now. it needs to spur growth,should not worryso much about deficits. do you agree? and if you doagree, how do you make that happen?

the president: actually, larry and i, and most of myeconomic team -- in fact, all of myeconomic team -- have consistentlymaintained that there is a way to reconcile the concernsabout debt anddeficits with the concerns about growth.

what we know is, is that ourfiscal problems are not short-term deficits. our discretionarybudget, that portion of the federal budget that isn’tdefense or social security or medicare ormedicaid, the entitlement programs,is at its smallest level in my lifetime, probably since dwighteisenhower. we are not lavishly spending on a whole bunchof social programs out there. andin many ways, a lot of these programs havebecome more efficient and pretty effective.

defense, we spent a lot from 2019to 2019, but generally we are stabilizing. and thepentagon, working with me, have come up with plans that allow usto meet our security needswhile still bringing down some of the costs ofdefense, particularly after having ended the war iniraq and on the brink ofending the war in afghanistan.

so when we talk about our deficitand debt problems, it is almost entirely health care costs.you eliminate the delta, the differencebetween what we spend on health care and what everyother country -- advancedindustrialized nation spends on health care, and that’s our long-termdebt. and if we’re able to bend the costcurve, we help solve the problem.

now, one way to do that is justto make health care cheaper overall. that’s i think the bestway to do it, and that’s what we’ve been doingthrough some of the measures in the affordablecare act. there are some other provisions that we couldtake that would maintain ourcommitment to seniors, medicare, social security,the disabled, and medicaid, while stillreducing very modestly the costs ofthose programs.

if we do those things, thatsolves our real fiscal problem, and we could take some of thatmoney, a verymodest portion on the front end, and invest in infrastructure that putspeopleback to work, improve our research and development.

so the idea would be do somethings in the short term that focus on growth; do some thingsin the long termthat deal with the long-term debt. that’swhat my budget reflects. that’s whatamultiple series of negotiations with john boehner talked about, the so-calledgrand bargain. wecouldn’t quite getthere in the end, mainly because republicans had a great deal of difficultywiththe idea of putting in more revenue to balance out some of the changesthat were made onentitlements.

i would guess a lot of people in this roomwould say another way to make some of thosethings happen would be to fix thecorporate tax code that everybody agrees is a mess. you’vegot some companies that pay way toomuch compared to their international competitors; somecompanies don’t pay atall. it’s not a good system. it’s not anefficient system, everybody agrees,but it doesn’t ever seem to change. can you make it change? and can you do something aboutrepatriationof u.s. assets overseas?

the president: well, here is the good news, is that both myadministration andrepublicans have talked about corporate tax reform. and paul ryan, who is going to becoming afterme, said he’s interested in corporate tax reform. and we’ve reached out to himand we’ve saidlet’s get to work. we put forward a veryspecific set of proposals that would lowerthe corporate tax rate, broaden thebase, close some loopholes. and in termsof internationalcompanies and competitiveness, what we’ve said is rather thana whole bunch of tangled lawsthat incentivize folks to keep money overseas,let’s have a modest but clear global minimumtax, get rid of some of the hugefluctuations that people experience. itwill save companiesmoney, make them more competitive and, in terms oftransitioning to that system, actuallyallow some people to bring back moneyand, in a one-time way, help us finance infrastructureand some other projectsthat need to get done.

i don’t expect republicans toadopt exactly the proposal that we’ve put forward. butthere’s not that much separation betweenwhat democrats are talking about -- i know chairmanmax baucus put outsomething today, the chairman of the finance committee -- what davecamp overin the house has talked about. thisshould be bridgeable.

the one thing i would caution is-- and i’ve said this to the business roundtable and othercorporate leaderswho i’ve talked to -- people like the idea of corporate tax reform intheory.in practice, if you want to makethe corporate tax reform deficit-neutral, then you actuallyhave to close someloopholes. and people like the idea of asimpler tax system until it’s theirparticular loophole that’s about to getclosed.

and what we can’t afford to do isto keep all the loopholes that are currently in place andlower the corporatetax rate. we would then blow anotherhole in the deficit that would have tobe filled. and what i’m not willing to do is to havehigher rates on the middle class in order topay for that.

some of the ceos here had a working groupearlier today, the mission of which was toaddress the question of how do youstay competitive. interestingly, atleast to me, their firstpriority -- first priority -- was this: immigration reform. the u.s. needs immigration reformto retaintalented workers educated in the u.s. and attract talent to the u.s. immigrationreform could provide an instantjolt to the u.s. economy which we need.

i know you agree with thatstatement, but it’s hard to see that happening right now. you’vegot the senate off on one track -- it’spassed a comprehensive bill the house won’t even agreeto take up. democrats want to do comprehensivereform. republicans want to do step-by-stepreform. it’s a poisonous politicalatmosphere. can you make it happen?

the president: i am actually optimistic that we’re going toget this done. i am acongenitaloptimist. i would have to be -- i’m named barack obama and i ran forpresident. (laughter.)

and won.

the president: and won twice. (laughter.)

so, look, keep in mind, first ofall, that what the ceos here said is absolutely right. this isa boost to our economy. everywhere i go, i meet with entrepreneursand ceos who say, i’vegot these terrific folks, they just graduated fromcaltech or mit or stanford, they’re ready to dobusiness here, some of themhave these amazing new ideas that we think we can commercialize-- but they’rebeing dragged back to their home countries, not because they want to gobutbecause the immigration system doesn’t work.

the good news is that the senatebill was a bipartisan bill and we know what thecomponent parts of thisare. we’ve got to have strong bordersecurity. we’ve got to havebetterenforcement of existing laws. we’ve gotto make sure that we have a legal immigrationsystem that doesn’t cause peopleto sit in the queue for 5 years, 10 years, 15 years -- in somecases, 20years. we should want to immediately sayto young people who we’ve helped toeducate in this country, you want to stay,we want you here.

and we do have to deal with about11 million folks who are in this country, most of themjust seekingopportunity; they did break the law by coming here or overstaying their visa,andthey’ve got to earn their way out of the shadows -- pay a fine, learnenglish, get to the back ofthe line, pay their back taxes -- but giving them amechanism whereby they can get right by oursociety. and that’s reflected in the senate bill.

now, i actually think that thereare a number of house republicans -- including paul ryan, ithink, if you askhim about it -- who agree with that. they’re suspicious of comprehensivebills, but if they want to chop thatthing up into five pieces, as long as all five pieces get done, idon’t carewhat it looks like as long as it’s actually delivering on those core valuesthat we talkabout.

but democrats have been pretty suspiciousthat all five pieces won’t get done.

the president: and that’s the problem. i mean, the key is -- what we don’t want todois simply carve out one piece of it -- let’s say agricultural jobs, which are important, but iseasier,frankly, or the high-skilled jobs that many in your audience here wouldimmediately wantto do -- but leave behind some of the tougher stuff that stillneeds to get done. we’re not goingtohave a situation in which 11 million people are still living in the shadows andpotentiallygetting deported on an ongoing basis.

so we’re going to have to do itall. in my conversations with therepublicans, i actually thinkthe divide is not that wide. so what we just have to do is find a pathwaywhere republicans inthe house, in particular, feel comfortable enough aboutprocess that they can go ahead andmeet us.

this, by the way, jerry, i thinkis a good example of something that’s been striking meabout our politics for awhile. when you go to other countries, the political divisions are so muchmorestark and wider. here in america, thedifference between democrats and republicans, we’refighting inside the 40-yardline, maybe in --

you’ve fooled most people on that in thelast few months, i’d say. (laughter.)

the president: well, no, no. i would distinguish between the rhetoric and the tacticsversus theideological differences. i mean, in most countries you’ve got -- people call measocialist sometimes, but, no, you’ve got to meet real socialists.(laughter.) you’ll have a sense ofwhata socialist is. (laughter.)

i’m talking about lowering thecorporate tax rate. my health carereform is based on theprivate marketplace. the stock market is looking pretty good last time i checked. and it is truethat i’m concerned aboutgrowing inequality in our system, but nobody questions theefficacy of marketeconomies in terms of producing wealth and innovation and keepinguscompetitive.

on the flip side, mostrepublicans, even the tea party -- one of my favorite signs during thecampaignwas folks hoisting a sign, “government, keep your hands off my medicare.” (laughter.)think about that. (laughter.) i mean, ideologically, they did not like the idea of thefederalgovernment, and yet they felt very protective about the basic social safety netthat hadbeen structured.

so my simple point is this: if we can get beyond the tactical advantagesthat partiesperceive in painting folks as extreme and trying to keep an eyealways on the next election,and for a while at least, just focus on governing,then there is probably 70 percent overlap on awhole range of issues. a lot of republicans want to getinfrastructure done, just like i do. alot ofthem believe in basic research, just like i do. a lot of them want to reform entitlementstomake sure that they’re affordable for the next generation; so do i. a lot of them say theywant to reform our taxsystem; so do i.

there are going to be differenceson the details, and those details matter and i’ll fight veryhard forthem. but we shouldn’t think thatsomehow the reason we’ve got these problems isbecause our policy differencesare so great.

well, the details are obviously importantenough to shut down the government just a coupleof weeks ago. and everybody knows we’re headed back towardshowdowns again -- january,budget; february, debt ceiling. jack lew was here earlier, your treasurysecretary, and said hethought maybe the system crossed a threshold in octoberand has realized it doesn’t want to goback and do that again. are you confident it’s not going to go backand do that again? and bythe way, theoecd, the organization of economic cooperation and development, suggestedtodaythat the u.s. just get rid of the debt ceiling entirely. would you be in favor of that?

the president: i think that the way our system is set up islike a loaded gun, and oncepeople thought we can get leverage on policydisputes by threatening default, that was anextraordinarily dangerousprecedent. and that’s a principle that ihad to adhere to, not just forme but for the next president -- that you’re notgoing to be able to threaten the entire u.s. orworld economy simply becauseyou disagree with me about a health care bill.

i’d like to believe that therepublicans recognize that was not a good strategy, and we’reprobably betteroff with a system in which that threat is not there on a perpetual basis. i donot foresee what we saw in october beingrepeated in january. but the broaderpoint is one thati think all of us have to take to heart. we have to be able to disagree on policyissues withoutresorting to the kinds of extreme tactics that end up hurtingall of us.

and that’s been my maindisagreement with a lot of my republican friends. and frankly, theamerican people agree withthat. they don’t expect us to march inlockstep. there’s a reasonwhy we’ve gottwo parties in this country. they doexpect that we are constantly thinking abouthow are we making sure they canfind a job that pays well, that their kids can go to college andafford it,that we are growing and competitive, that we are dealing with our fiscalposition in asensible way. and if wekeep them in mind consistently, then i think we’re going to besuccessful.

one thing -- you’ve got someinternational ceos here, and i think they’ll confirm this --when i travel, what’sstriking to me is people around the world think we’ve got a really goodhand.you just take the example of energy. they say america is poised to change ourgeopolitics entirely because ofthe advances we’ve made in oil production and natural gasproduction. it means manufacturing here is much moreattractive than it used to be. that’sahuge competitive advantage.

we’ve got the most productiveworkers just about in the world, and our workers havebecome more and moreproductive, and a lot of companies look at that and say we wish we hadworkerswho were able to operate the way these folks do.

our university systems, ourresearch infrastructure -- all those things are the envy of theworld. and one of the great things about america --sometimes we get worried that we’re losingtraction and the sky is falling, andback in the ‘80s, japan was about to take over, and thenchina, and obviouslybefore that, the soviet union -- and we usually come out okay because wechangeand we adapt. i just want everybody toremember that we’re in a very strong position tocompete as long as ourpolitical system functions. it doesn’thave to be outstanding. this issort oflike winston churchill, two cheers for democracy. and it’s always going to be messy. butit’s got to function better than it has.

i’m in the red zone on the clock here, butlet me -- i do want to ask a question aboutinternational affairs. you’ve mentioned the world and the u.s.position in it. there’s thepossibilitythis week of an agreement with iran, a preliminary, limited agreement in whichtheywould free some of their nuclear activities in return for some relief onsanctions. your israelifriends havebeen arguing, along with some of your friends as well as your foes in congress,thatif you give the iranian regime any relief on sanctions, the sanctionsregime will fall apart;countries that don’t want to be there in the firstplace will head for the exits; it will all comeapart -- and that’s the dangerof what you’re negotiating right now.

i know you talked to somesenators about this very topic today. isthere going to be a deal?and why canyou ease sanctions without having them fall apart?

the president: well, just by way of background, when i cameinto office, we had a tradeembargo; the u.s. had done some thingsunilaterally. we did not have a strong,enforceableinternational mechanism to really put the squeeze on iran aroundits nuclear program, despitethe fact that it had violated a range of u.n. andnonproliferation treaty requirements.

so we built, we constructed, withthe help of congress, the strongest sanctions regimeever. and it has put a bite on the iranianeconomy. they have seen a 5 percentcontraction thelast year in their economy. it’s projected to be another contraction this year. and in partbecause the sanctions have beenso effective, we were able to get iran to seriously come to thetable and lookat how are they going to give assurances to the international communitythatthey are, in fact, not pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

i don’t know if we’ll be able toclose a deal this week or next week. wehave been very firmwith the iranians even on the interim deal about what weexpect. and some of the reportingoutthere has been somewhat inaccurate, understandably, because the p5-plus-1, themembersof the -- permanent members of the security council in addition to --and germany as well --have kept the negotiations fairly tight.

but the essence of the deal wouldbe that they would halt advances on their nuclearprogram; they would roll backsome elements that get them closer to what we call breakoutcapacity, wherethey can run for -- a weapon before the international community has a chancetoreact; that they would subject themselves to more vigorous inspections eventhan the onesthat are currently there, in some cases, daily inspections.

in return, what we would do wouldbe to open up the spigot a little bit for a very modestamount of relief thatis entirely subject to reinstatement if, in fact, they violated any part ofthisearly agreement. and it wouldpurchase a period of time -- let’s say, six months -- during whichwe could seeif they could get to the end state of a position where we, the israelis,theinternational community could say with confidence iran is not pursuing anuclear weapon.

now, part of the reason i haveconfidence that the sanctions don’t fall apart is because we’renot doinganything around the most powerful sanctions. the oil sanctions, the bankingsanctions, the financial servicessanctions -- those are the ones that have really taken a bigchunk out of theiranian economy. so oil production andoil sales out of iran have dropped bymore than half since these sanctions wereput in place. they’ve got over $100billion of oilrevenue that is sitting outside of their country. the rial, their currency, hasdroppedprecipitously. and all those sanctionsand the architecture for them don’t go anywhere.

essentially, what we do is weallow them to access a small portion of these assets that arefrozen. keep in mind, though, that because the oiland banking sanctions stay in place, they willactually still be losing moneyeven during this six-month period relative to the amount of oilsales they hadback in 2019.

so what we are suggesting both tothe israelis, to members of congress here, to theinternational community, butalso to the iranians, is, let’s look, let’s test the proposition thatover thenext six months we can resolve this in a diplomatic fashion, while maintainingtheessential sanctions architecture, and, as president of the united states,me maintaining alloptions to prevent them from getting nuclear weapons. i think that is a test that isworthconducting.

and my hope and expectation isnot that we’re going to solve all of this just this week inthis interim phase,but rather that we’re purchasing ourselves some time to see how serioustheiranian regime might be in re-entering membership in the world community andtakingthe yoke of these sanctions off the backs of their economy.

well, mr. president, with that, let me justthank you again for joining us. iappreciate it verymuch. (applause.)

the president: i enjoyed it. thank you very much. (applause)