Speech on re-election as Leader of ALDE Group

Speech by Graham Watson on Wed 29th Nov 2006

Thank you Marco for chairing the Group.

Colleagues I am proud of you for having gone for a secret ballot and if I were in your position I would have done exactly the same. I would have done so and I am indeed happy you did. Partly because I know the charm of liberalism is anarchy rather than conspiracy. But partly also because I promised my wife that I would fulfil her wishes and those of my children in the way I cast my own vote.

Colleagues, I am grateful for the confidence you shown in me. When I joined you twelve years ago, there had been no UK Liberal Democrat Members ever in our directly elected European Parliament. I have the honour to have been the first member of my party to be declared elected here and, in assuming the honour you bestowed on me seven years later to lead the Group and have bestowed on me on two occasions since, I know that I do so not only in my own right but also on behalf of the Party of John Stuart Mill and William Gladstone and Grimond and Jenkins and Steel, I know too that there is an even greater breath and depth of Liberal thinking across our continent. We are the party of Grundtvig and Salvador de Madariaga, of Benjamin Constant and Karl Herman Flach, of Venizelos and Einaudi and beyond. And perhaps sometimes we overlook this cornucopia of Liberal Democrat thought which sustains and guide us. I believe it is one of the reasons why Liberal Democrats are growing in strength across our continent. The ELDR Party, whose President Annemie Neyts is an esteemed colleague of ours, is currently coordinating the action of governments which put forward Prime Ministers in Belgium and Denmark and Finland and Estonia and Romania. It is playing an important role in coalition in several other countries. The European Democratic Party, whose Congress takes place in Rome this weekend, provides the government of one of the big Member States, Italy and is increasingly represented in France, in Lithuania and elsewhere in Central and Eastern Europe.

Even in this mandate two of our own Members - Emma Bonino and Cecilia Malström - have gone on to become European Affairs Ministers in their own countries and to play a role in the Council. Our group builds on this strength. Your talent, your energies, both individual and collective are liberal democrat action here in the crucible of European politics which is the European Parliament.

I think we enjoy a great fortune to live in a time replete with opportunities for liberalism not only at home but in Asia and Africa and the Hispanic World. I think for Liberal Democrats in a supra-national parliament, not to grasp these opportunities would be a betrayal of our ideological heritage. I look forward to making proposals to you for deepening our cooperation with Liberal Democrat forces elsewhere in the world.

I look forward too to working with you on the new opportunities for Liberalism here at home, here in Europe, because it seems to me that politics these days has changed radically. It is characterised not by the traditional divisions between left and right over economic issues. Nobody believes anymore in a socialist economy. It is characterised by the issues that I would call the drawbridge issues. The issue of how we respond to globalisation: whether we respond by pulling the drawbridge up or whether you respond by having it down.

When I look at the rightwing of politics, the essential response to the challenges of globalisation is to pull up the draw bridge. If you were a conservative you retreat internationalism, if you were a Christian Democrat you retreat into the religious orthodoxy. The response of the left is rather uncertain. Some, particularly in Greece, perhaps still in France, are "drawbridge up" parties; more and more are recognising they need the drawbridge down. But it seems to me that our family, our political family represents drawbridge down politics, recognising that we need to integrate our economy with the rest of the World; recognising, that we need to go out and seek ideas elsewhere, to engage culturally with other people. To be open and to seek an open and progressive world. And that must be a defining feature of our action over the second half of this Parliament.

This is not going to be an easy parliament; I do not need to tell you that we currently work in what I think can only be described as a situation where we have a Grosse Koalition; There is no doubt that the politics of Berlin are playing an increasingly important part in the politics of this house, as seen in the cooperation between Hans Gert Poettering and Martin Schultz and therefore between their two groups. We need to break that cynical 'old pals' act; we have got to seek cooperation in areas where we can find common ground with others such as the reform of this house, so that we can maximise our influence. And we can give no blank cheque of support to any other party; if we work with others it has to be to promote our cause, to promote a Liberal Democrat agenda for Europe, and I look forward to developing that agenda with you over the next two and a half years.