In this address to a Conservative Party dinner in Bury St. Edmunds, Jeremy Hunt opens with a light‑hearted anecdote and a tribute to his long‑time friend Grant Shapps, praising his entrepreneurial spirit and recent appointment as Transport Secretary. Hunt then shares a colourful diplomatic story about the Queen’s first meeting with Vladimir Putin (when he was mayor of St Petersburg), using it to illustrate the skill of British diplomacy. He shifts to a strategic overview of Brexit, arguing that both the EU and the UK have mis‑understood each other’s political and economic motives, and stresses the need to honour the 2016 referendum while delivering a version of Brexit that remains open and outward‑looking. Hunt frames the biggest current threat as a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn, warning that Labour’s proposals to confiscate a share of large companies and to nationalise utilities would devastate the economy and increase national debt. He highlights Britain’s historic role in promoting democracy worldwide and suggests that the world is watching the UK to see if it can uphold its democratic credentials through a successful Brexit. The speech concludes with a call for party unity behind Prime Minister Boris Johnson and a brief personal note about why Hunt joined the Conservative Party at university.
Chapters
So first and foremost, it is absolute my pleasure to welcome you. Thank you for being here and for coming to speak to us. It has been one of the most momentous and potentially challenging years for the country, for the government, for the party, and for many of us personally. And your story and what you've been through and your experience is something we all. incredibly interested to hear about tonight. So thank you very much, Jeremy.
Thank you very much indeed, Catherine. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great pleasure to be here for my very, very good friend Grant. This is actually one of the first speeches that I've given since the leadership campaign in the summer, and I'm sort of used to looking at audiences and thinking, is that person back, Boris, or is it has-to-be-Boris? And I always remember that wonderful saying by Bruce Forsyth. He said, remember, only half the audience are ever going to like you. Don't worry about the other half, they're bastards. Of course, there are no bastards here in Bury St. Edmunds. Pleased to be here, actually for the first time in 8 years, because I think I came 8 years ago to speak for Grant and Belinda. And since then, I've been both Health Secretary and Foreign Secretary, and that does mean that I need to start my speeches with a quick health and safety check and just ask, are there any doctors here this evening? No. Are there any ambassadors here this evening? Well, I hope the doctors will forgive me if I tell you the story about the argument between the doctor, the ambassador, and the politician as to which was the most important for the future of humanity. And the doctors started this, and it's obviously us doctors, because without us, how could mankind survive all these millennia? To which the ambassador said, yes, but without us ambassadors building bridges between the nations, who would have created order out of the chaos? To which the politician smiled and said, ah yes, but who created the chaos? Of course, that has nothing to do with Brexit or any of the situation that we currently face, but when I was Foreign Secretary, it was a great privilege. Because we really do have the finest diplomatic service anywhere in the world, and it's a great privilege to be responsible. And one of the best things about it is that you hear stories on the diplomatic circuit, and one of the stories I heard was of the first time the Queen met President Putin, and he wasn't actually president at that time. He was mayor of St. Petersburg, and there was a very big argument in the Foreign Office before the visit as to who should be the Queen's interpreter. And MI6 said, obviously we should provide the interpreter because we happen to speak rather good Russian for very obvious reasons, and we've got just the person who can be the interpreter for the Queen. But the Royal Navy So as it happens, the naval attaché in Moscow is a fantastic Russian speaker, such a good Russian speaker he even knows Russian slang. And so there was this big argument in Whitehall, and in the end the Royal Navy won. And so there was this young naval officer, spoke brilliant, brilliant Russian, even knew Russian slang, who was interpreting for the Queen and Putin as they were walking around the gardens of this palace in St. Petersburg, and the gardens had been freshly planted by the Russians for the Queen's visit. And President Putin was showing the Queen the gardens, and he said, we did have a bit of problem with the rabbits when we planted these gardens. And the interpreter, who understood Russian slang very well, happened to know that rabbit was the slang for peasant. Putin said to the Queen, they did have a little bit of a problem with the peasants. To which the Queen said, really? So what did you do? To which Putin said, well, we had to put up little fences around all the plants. And the Queen said, and did they work? And Putin said, no, the fences didn't work. The Queen said, "So what did you do?" Putin said, "We shot them." The Queen said, "That sounds a little bit extreme," and she demonstrated why she is our country's finest diplomat to navigate a moment like that. But look, I I want to just give some reflections on the situation that we're in as a country, whether. The first thing I want to do is to thank you for sending to Parliament an absolutely superb MP in Grant. Grant and I have both experienced the highs and lows of modern political life, but I can tell you that he is a superb minister, and I'm absolutely delighted that he's back in the Cabinet. He will be a brilliant Transport Secretary because— and this is a word I found myself using over the summer— Grant is an entrepreneur. And, you know, we cannot have too many entrepreneurs in British politics because they are the people who get things done. He was a brilliant chairman of the Conservative Conservative Party, and I'm delighted he's back. But I've known that throughout all of this, he's been the most fantastic campaigning local MP. And so, Grant, it's fantastic to support you, and it's great to see Belinda here as well. When I see someone like Belinda, I always think about Dennis and Margaret Thatcher and the occasion where Dennis Thatcher was once asked who wore the trousers in his relationship with Margaret Thatcher. And he said, I wear the trousers and I wash them and I iron them as well. But let me just sum up where I think we're at in this, in this Brexit process. It's been incredibly difficult because essentially Both sides have misunderstood some pretty important things about the other side. If we're honest now, looking back 3 years, we in the UK, on all sides of the debate, we always thought that in the end Europeans would be economically rational, they'll come to the table and do a deal, and underestimated the fact that for Europeans the EU is a political project as much as an economic project, and that is why they have been so much less willing to compromise than we hoped. But unfortunately, the misunderstanding has also gone in the other direction, because they have looked at us, and I think one of the problems is because they all speak English and they read our newspapers and they enjoy Fawlty Towers and all these things, they think they understand us. But they have in fact misunderstood that for us too, Brexit is not just an economic project, it is also a political project. It's a desire to have more control over our own destiny, and there's a big debate about the best way to do that. But that is why we too have not been prepared to compromise on important issues of principle. And it isn't so much malevolence from the EU as bureaucratic inertia. If you're trying to get 27 countries to agree on anything, it's, it's a big nightmare. And that's why they have these bureaucratic structures, and they're frankly never going to budge unless the Irish give them the nod and the wink. And that's why the last couple of days have been so significant. And I hope, I hope upon hope, that this is the moment where we can see that breakthrough that we all want, that is in everyone's interests. And the reason that we have to do this is because as Conservatives, we know how important it is that we honour our democracy by honouring that referendum result. But we also know that getting Brexit wrong isn't actually the biggest of the many challenges this country faces. The biggest and most dangerous challenge we face is a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn. And you just have to look at the announcements that we've seen from the Labour Party in the last few weeks to remind yourself. They have said they will confiscate 10% of the shares of every company with more than 250 employees. That is confiscating £300 billion of wealth. Imagine what that would do to the business culture in this country, to the international investment on which thousands and thousands of jobs depend. On top of which, they've said they want to nationalise all the utilities, which very simply would add £6 £6,500 to the debt of every household in this country. That would increase our national debt by 10% in one fell swoop. So all the effort that we have been making over the last 9 years that spectacularly turned around the economy after the biggest financial recession since the Second World War, that brought our national finances back under control, that created 1,000 jobs for every single day that we've been in office. All of that hard work, that pain, that effort will be ripped up in one fell swoop, and that would be an absolute disaster, not just for us, but for our children and our grandchildren, many generations to come. So that is the thing that we must never lose sight of in the whole of this Brexit discussion. But I want to tell you another reason why it's so important that we resolve Brexit and go on to fight those bigger battles. And it relates to my time as Foreign Secretary, because when I visited other countries, I was always struck by something that was a little bit surprising and perhaps a bit counterintuitive. counterintuitive. Every country I went to, they seemed to have a whole lot more respect for Britain than we seem to have for ourselves. Interesting. And I often ask myself, why is it that we are held in this, this great esteem around the world? And of course you can point to things like the world's 5th or 6th biggest economy, the world's financial center, The world's language, the world's great playwrights, the world's— 4 of the world's top 10 universities. We've got a great long list of lovely statistics that prime ministers like to trot out. But actually, at the heart of it was something much more profound, which is they look at this country as one of the oldest and greatest and most robust democracies in the world. They look at the international order that we've had since 1945, which has been the most prosperous and peaceful in the history of humanity, which was really put in place by the United Kingdom and the United States. And they look at our country, they look at our history, and they say, you know, this is a country which not just Magna Carta and the Great Reformation Reform Act, the Suffragettes, they didn't just fight for democracy at home, but actually they fought for democracy abroad, on the continent of Europe when it was threatened by fascism, but also with the legacy we left behind with all those former colonies that became, through sometimes a halting road, but worked their way towards becoming democracies as well. So they look at this country as a great exemplar of democracy, and then they look at that Brexit vote and they say, this is the real test. Because they say, we know that the political establishment, people like Grant and me, actually voted to remain in the EU. We know that you didn't really want this, but the people told you this what they wanted to happen, and you the politicians said you would do what the people told you. And so now we want to see if you really are that great democracy that we've always thought you are. And that's why they are watching us now, and that's why it is so important at this moment of, of a big test for our country that we are able to look them back and say, yes, we are. Great democracy. Yes, we are going to deliver that Brexit decision. And you know what? We're going to make it a huge success. Because the way to heal the divisions of Brexit—and there are huge divisions, of course, in our country—the way to heal those divisions isn't to cancel Brexit, which the Lib Dems want. It's not to have a second referendum, which is what we get under Labour. This would just mean we'd still. be arguing about Brexit in 5 years or 10 years or, or 15 years' time. The way to heal those divisions is to deliver Brexit, because that's what the referendum said we must do, and then to show the people who voted Remain that this isn't the Brexit of their worst nightmares. This is actually going to be a Brexit where we remain an open, tolerant, internationally minded, outward-looking, positive country. And that is the Brexit that we are going to deliver. And that is the Brexit that I believe in and that Boris believes in, which is why I'm proud to support Boris as our Prime Minister. Because, you know, with all these threats, the thing that matters now more than ever is that we come together as a party. And I just want to finish by telling you about when I joined the Conservative Party. I was in my first year at university, and I joined because I believed then that
