Let's talk about our future.
The future of our party, our politics and our country.
Most of you were lucky enough to spend your childhoods here.
I was not.
I was born here but grew up under socialism.
So, I know the reason why millions of people from all over the world want to live here.
It is because they know that they can build a future here.
But we can all feel a growing sense that the future is not as bright as it once was.
That, despite all of our strengths, our history and our potential, we have lost control.
And this is not just because of the mistakes Labour are making – and they are making many mistakes.
It's because of the mistakes that we made.
Labour are only there because people no longer believed in the Conservatives.
We dealt with some of the most profound challenges faced by any government since World War Two.
The aftermath of the financial crisis, Covid and Ukraine.
But we ended up mired in scandal, unable to deliver on our promises and fundamentally distrusted.
It's time for something different.
The British people are yearning for something better – and this Labour Government is not it.
They have no ideas.
At best, they are reannouncing things we have already done.
And, at their worst, they are clueless, irresponsible and dishonest.
They are trying to pull the wool over the eyes of the public about the state of Britain's finances.
Placing political donors into civil service jobs.
Pretending they had no plans to cut pensioner benefits before the election and then doing exactly that to cover the cost of pay rises for the unions – with no promise of reform.
But their model of spend, spend, spend is broken and they don’t know what to do.
And this will only lead to even more cynicism in politics.
They are already making worse mistakes than we did.
But if we want to become worthy of the British people's trust again, we can't just sit around pointing out how terrible Labour are.
That’s just not good enough.
And we can't just keep having the same policy arguments from the last parliament.
We lost.
We are not in power.
Labour will fail, and when that time comes, and the British people are looking for change, then we have to be that change.
We have to focus on renewal.
The renewal of our party, our politics and our thinking.
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And it starts with principles.
Principles are the fundamentals that give us direction, unity and certainty.
They must underpin everything we do.
Here are a few of my principles.
First, I believe in personal responsibility.
My late father once said to me: ”only 20% of what happens to you is down to others. 80% is down to your actions and your choices”.
That is why I believe in personal responsibility.
That is why I know that the Government cannot solve all our problems - and nor should it try to.
Government should nurture a fair and safe society in which people can prosper by their own efforts.
A government that tries to do everything will likely end up achieving nothing.
It will also run out of money.
This was one of our mistakes.
We talked right but governed left.
Sounding like Conservatives but acting like Labour.
Government should do fewer things but better.
And what it does, it should do with brilliance.
Second, I believe in citizenship.
Citizenship is not just about having a passport.
It is a commitment to a country and the people in it.
A country belongs to its citizens. It is nothing without them.
We cannot treat their needs or concerns as secondary or inconvenient or of a lower priority than anyone else’s.
People should not be made to feel guilty for questioning levels of immigration, legal or illegal, if it is changing the place they know and love.
And government should not be shy of doing whatever it takes to change things.
If people don't want their taxes to pay for foreign criminals to be in our jails or on our streets, those criminals should be removed.
If they want local people to have priority for housing, for benefits, for school places, we must make that happen.
Our country is not a dormitory for people just here to make money or a hotel for those passing through.
It is our home and no one else will look after it.
Third, I believe in equality under the law.
If citizenship is to mean something, then our laws must apply equally to all citizens.
Anything else breeds division and resentment.
In government, I saw just how malign and destructive identity politics had become.
Laws brought in to protect everyone were used by left-wingers to protect certain groups above others.
We have seen in history what happens when Governments do this.
That must not happen here.
And it is why when everyone was talking about the five new MPs from Reform, I was far more worried about the five new MPs elected on the back of sectarian Islamist politics; alien ideas that have no place here.
The sort of politics we need to defeat and defeat quickly.
Fourth, I believe in the family.
The foundation of our society is not the individual; it is the family.
Whether it's the family we're born into or the family we build.
My family is everything to me. It's everything to most of us.
Sometimes government just doesn’t get family.
It wants to help with childcare, not because it loves children, but so their mums can get back to work quickly.
We need to celebrate families.
We need to place them at the centre of our policies and our actions.
For the good of society, not for the good of the Treasury.
Fifth, and most importantly, I believe in truth.
Truth is not relative.
Those who know me best know that I don't do spin.
I do do charm; sometimes.
I think life is better when people say what they think.
I think politics is better when we tell it like it is.
Spin can only get you so far.
Better to deal with hard truths today than big problems tomorrow.
And this has been the central failure of politics for 25 years. Maybe even longer.
For too long, politics has just been about working out what the voters want to hear then saying it back to them.
The triumph of words over deeds.
That has to change.
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Because principles only mean something if you turn them into action.
Policy without action is just chat.
But our whole system is broken.
In government, I had to keep fighting that system.
A system that has evolved over recent decades to stop governments doing things they were elected to do.
I would see a problem, try to fix it and be told “Sorry minister, you can't do that”.
People would ask for help. Ask me to intervene. And when I tried to, I was told: “it's not a good look. Ministers should not get involved like that”.
Well, I like to get involved.
It's time to make sure that governments can do what they're elected to do.
Because if they cannot then democracy does not mean anything.
We need to reboot, reset and rewire the way that government works so that it can serve the public.
Nothing is more important.
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That is why we are here at the Institute for Engineering and Technology.
Right now, this country desperately needs an engineer.
Engineers fix problems.
We do tough stuff.
Getting my engineering degree was harder than running for leadership of the Conservative Party!
But it gave me a whole new way of looking at the world.
Engineers are realists.
We see the world as it truly is but we can also dream and plot a path from idea to reality.
We don't make things better just by using words.
There is little room for error in what we do.
When I worked in banking, if my code broke, people would lose their money.
If engineers build a plane badly, it crashes.
A bridge built to the wrong spec comes tumbling down.
So, we know how to build systems that work.
It is because we understand trade-offs.
We don't try to do everything.
We understand how to manage limitations and expectations.
Every engineer has had to explain the magic triangle of quality, cost and time.
Things can be good, they can be fast and they can be cheap. But they can’t be all three.
Many politicians simply do not understand that.
That's why they run into trouble.
Too often politicians pretend that we can have everything.
So, they make promises they cannot keep.
They say you can spend more on everything and still have lower taxes.
They say that there are huge efficiencies to be had in government without identifying them.
They propose huge changes without making plans.
Engineers accept reality.
Engineers are honest.
Engineers get stuff done.
I am an engineer.
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I want to help us rebuild the party, rewire the state, reboot the economy, revive our country and make it go places.
And we need to do this because the challenges of the next decade are going to be even bigger than what has come before.
This is why my campaign is called Renewal 2030 and not Kemi for Leader.
The problems of the future cannot be solved by one person.
The Reform Party cannot solve them. The Labour Party will not solve them.
We need to renew the Conservative Party so it can solve the problems that will plague the next decade.
How do we deal with global mass migration?
What jobs will be left when Artificial Intelligence is doing all the fun stuff?
How do we know what is real? When so much is not.
How does an NHS designed for a young, working population adapt to a complex, ageing population?
When Taiwan is under threat from China, when Israel is under threat from Iran, when Ukraine is under threat from Russia, we need to ask ourselves if we are ready for this dangerous new world.
We cannot rely on laws from the 1950s or assumptions of the 1980s; we need to renew our thinking.
That renewal of our party, our politics, is vital if we are to renew our country and its position in the world.
I don’t pretend I have all the answers but I’m an engineer and I know how to find them.
Let’s use this time in opposition wisely.
When I was young, the future was exciting.
I hate the fact that young people no longer find it so.
And for the future to mean anything, it must mean something to the young.
The Conservatives used to have a vision and an offer for the young
We use the words “growth” and “opportunity” and “enterprise”, but what do we really mean?
It’s the chance to build something: a career, a business, a family.
To acquire capital and, through it, security: savings, a house, investments, a pension, so that even if today is tough, tomorrow is bright.
We have always believed that government should help you in that endeavour, not get in your way.
That it should be fair and honest and even-handed.
That it should share and strengthen the values and spirit of the nation.
That the dynamism such enterprise unleashes will enrich us all.
We need to be confident Conservatives again.
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Because our party has principles.
The very best principles.
They are the principles of the British people.
The principles not of the centre ground but of the common ground.
They are the source of our country's strength, its heritage and its future.
With the right engineering, there is no limit to what we can do.
It is time to begin this work.
It is time to give new hope.
It is time to renew.
