Use this election to reject the Farage model of Britain. Let’s get our nation again | Gordon Brown

For so long as I can recall, our nation has been outlined by what we would name three fundamental truths that we maintain to be British: first, our devotion to liberty, tolerance and the rule of regulation; second, our intuition for equity; and third, as an island and buying and selling nation, our dedication to partaking with the world.

And whereas within the warmth of an election battle it’s troublesome to see past the claims and counterclaims about tax, spending and migration, it’s clear to me that far, much more is at stake on 4 July than what’s conveyed within the each day headlines. For because the prejudices of Nigel Farage and his supporters have come to dominate rightwing pondering and poison the nationwide debate, it’s these three defining British values, which I consider he and his fellow travellers fail to uphold, that should be fought for.

By pandering to Farage, the Conservatives have been caving in to a hard-right agenda. Whereas Farage has belatedly disowned the racist views of some of Reform’s candidates, he has refused to expel the usual bearer for Bexhill and Battle, Ian Gribbin, who mentioned Britain would have been higher off if we had “taken Hitler up on his supply of neutrality”. Gribbin later mentioned “I apologise for these previous feedback and withdraw them unreservedly”, however his remarks had already been magnified by the official party response that his “historic perspective of what the UK may have finished within the 30s … might be true”. A brand new and wholly inaccurate historical past of Britain is being written by Farage and pals, and the previous few weeks have seen the fitting capitulating to the arduous proper as they divide the nation between those that are the “ins” and those that are thought-about the “outs”.

Take first the thought of equity. What George Orwell known as “decency” has all the time been underpinned by a robust sense of civic duty. As each ballot reveals, our nation has by no means for lengthy fallen for the concept that we’re solely self-seeking people with no obligations to one another past the backyard gate. That is illustrated most of all within the broad-based assist for pooling and sharing our sources equitably to pay for our Nationwide Well being Service, which Farage now in impact wants to privatise.

However, simply as worryingly, the consensus that has been in place because the Beveridge report of 1942 – that collectively, via a distinctively British welfare state, we might stop “the 5 evils” of need, illness, idleness, ignorance and squalor – is being torn aside by Conservative vindictiveness. By setting a cap on benefits payments irrespective of the household’s want, by inserting a restrict on lease funds regardless of what the owner expenses, by denying any new child third child the right to benefit, the Conservative authorities has damaged the hyperlink between the mouths we’ve to feed and the fundamental assist we’d like so as to take action. It was as soon as extensively accepted that “social safety” was there to take the disgrace out of want, however now the meals financial institution, not the welfare state, is turning into our nationwide security internet, and persons are pressured to depend upon charity quite than common credit score because the final line of defence towards destitution. I’ve by no means seen poor folks so humiliated and stigmatised.

Second, we’ve all the time upheld and, much more importantly, popularised world wide the significance of fundamental civil liberties and the rule of regulation. I and lots of different British leaders have talked in glowing phrases of the “golden thread” that connects Magna Carta of 1215 and the Invoice of Rights of 1689 to the European conference on human rights (ECHR) of 1950 and the Human Rights Act of 1998. But, from the unprecedented method Boris Johnson prorogued parliament to keep away from scrutiny and his denigration of judges exercising their constitutional operate, to the assaults on the very authorized instrument – the ECHR – that Churchill and his colleagues created, his successors at the moment have systematically undermined the rule of regulation. Certainly, the occasion of regulation and order is now considering abandoning the ECHR – one thing not even the Italian far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, is planning on doing.

These actions comply with ministerial orders despatched to authorities legal professionals to proceed with drafting laws that ignores worldwide authorized conventions and aligns the UK with “intolerant democracies” reminiscent of Hungary and Turkey. One other 5 years of Conservative rule places Britain prone to turning into an outlier from the really democratic world. As Keir Starmer has mentioned, a Britain devoted to our values ought to by no means discover itself a global “pariah”.

And third, the British folks have by no means seen the Channel as a moat reducing us off from Europe and past, however as a freeway to the world, making us a rustic of merchants, service provider venturers, missionaries and diplomats. The far proper desires to assert that Britain does greatest once we stand aloof and aside, rejecting what they name “entanglements” with outsiders on the grounds that cooperation between international locations will all the time undermine nationwide sovereignty. By leaving much more European our bodies such because the ECHR, we might concede that we are able to by no means be a frontrunner in Europe once more. Such pondering rests on the delusion that closing the door to cooperation will make us stronger. However Britain is at its greatest when it’s outward trying – because it was when it led the final century’s struggle in Europe towards fascism, totalitarianism, antisemitism and racism, and because it could possibly be once more underneath the internationalism articulated by David Lammy.

We face a alternative that’s extra elementary than kind of tax, kind of spending or kind of migration. The selection is basically about what sort of nation we’re and wish to change into. This normal election provides us the possibility to reject the Farage model of Britain and to get our actual nation again, and to indicate that greatness comes from standing tall in defence of our rules. To indicate that greatness comes from standing tall and shifting collectively in defence of your tradition, your historical past and your values. Certainly, 4 July wouldn’t simply be our independence day from the Conservatives, however a return to the values that make us British. And with a world in flames, the selection is extra essential at the moment than a decade in the past.

What turns pessimism to optimism is my agency perception that within the years forward the form of values we’ve historically upheld can encourage a brand new technology of younger folks. As an alternative of the form of populist nationalism we see on the rise in France, a Labour authorities can heighten cooperation throughout borders to resolve worldwide crises from air pollution to pandemics, from poverty to migration, from monetary instability to worldwide terrorism.

So this election is about whether or not we succumb to pessimism or embrace hopefulness. At this election we are able to both add to despair or give folks hope. I select hope.

• Gordon Brown was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010

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