Speech  byDavid Lammy MP, Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Justice, at PES Congress 2025

Speech at Party of European Socialists

Friends, it's a great honour to be here with you in Amsterdam.

But it's more than an honour, at this hour we must be together.

This is the situation.

Working people are under pressure.

We all know the strains - Technology, Migration, Cost of Living.

It's the same across all our countries.

We all feel this stress and uncertainty because our people are suffering.

And we all know they are looking both left and right for the change they crave.

This means politics is wide open.

Our polls marked by extreme volatility at this point in the cycle - and those that are popular are those that offer change.

But it's a moment which our founders - men like Keir Hardie and Jean Jaurès - would instantly recognise as a moment fraught with peril but also full of possibility.

Over a century ago, working people were facing the total transformation of their industrial and social lives. 

Amidst all this change, they were crying out for justice — and our movement —

the whole progressive project — Social Democrat and Labour - began to answer their call.

And we must do so once again with the same intellectual and political daring of our founding heroes - as an alliance for working people, working across Europe and working together as Europeans. 

Because we in Britain did not stop being European with Brexit.

Because Britain and the rest of Europe still share a culture, we still share history, we still share values and we still share the same vision for a better future.

Even as we sit outside of the EU, the continent of Europe is where we belong and we stand shoulder to shoulder with parties that spread rights and progress.

Rights for workers, rights for women and rights for all minorities who made our quest for justice the great story of the twentieth century. 

Without our great parties, we would be without social safety nets, without universal healthcare and without basic dignity for all.

We have achieved so much together. But can we be confident that the great story of the Twenty First Century is going to be the expansion and deepening of justice and not its reverse?

The Populist Right Is More International. This is why history is not enough.

Because right now the Populist Right, even as it champions barriers and borders - is organising and sharing more effectively as - an international -  than we are

From Martin Sellner to Tommy Robinson, this is an international network.

From Nigel Farage to Steve Bannon, they are supporting each other.

From Alice Weidel to Marine Le Pen, they are learning from one another.

To extraordinary effect.

Nigel Farage says he's stunned by the fact his former party leader in Wales took Russian bribes.

But we're not stunned

Because the Kremlin has a proven track record of supporting the networks that want European unity to fail.

We are here today because we cannot fail. We are in a race to shape the politics of the 21st century with the Populist Right.

Prime Minister Sanchez, our progressive statesman, has consistently warned of this.

He not only wins elections he's also right. 

And in the race the more allies you have, the more effective you are

Because the more we learn from each other.

The stronger we will be.

We Are Winning Worldwide.

Always and everywhere, in our own national struggles we hear the Populist Right speaking of itself as a rising worldwide tide.

But in actual fact, it's us who have been winning.

In July last year we won in Britain, with a historic majority that nobody ever thought was possible. Ending fourteen years of Tory rule.

Yes, the right has won elsewhere.

But since then, we've kept winning.

In April, we won in Canada, roaring back from deep mid-term lows.

In May, we won in Australia with the same story. 

In September, we won in Norway, roaring back again from those-mid term blues.

And there is a recipe to our victories - a politics that I call Progressive Realism.

Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway – Our winners' laser focused on cost of living.

This is the politics of wages and bills not the student politics of protest of too many parties to our left who prefer the politics of marches to the tough choices of governing for working people.

We've won when we've acknowledged pressures, explained their cause

And acted with a clear plan to help.

Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway – Our winners united the Left and the middle ground.

Because faced with the stakes, faced with the facts about the Populist Right.

Voters backed the governments that could hold them off - not toy with parts of their agenda and split the vote to welcome them in.

And we've won when we owned the future and harnessed these extraordinary new technologies for social progress and public services that people see and feel everyday - aIl making their everyday easier.

Britain, Canada, Australia, Norway – Our winners stand for security.

Rearming, to face the threats we face.

Reasserting, what patriotism and national sovereignty really mean.

Resolutely being somewhere parties, that stand for Britain, Canada, Australia and Norway

Not anywhere parties that stand for abstract nouns and not a specific place.

We've won when we're led by statesmen.

Keir Starmer, with his leadership on Ukraine

Mark Carney, with his expertise on finance

Anthony Albanese, with his commitment to Pacific security

Jonas Stor, with his early action on Palestinian recognition

And we see it in our family that have served the longest.

In Mette Frederiksen, whose realism on foreign and domestic policies has kept progressives in power and shown us all how to win.

Friends, the stakes we face in Europe are enormous.

On the one hand, everything we stand for and believe in - Fairness. Climate. Freedom.

And on the other hand, a Populist Right that would rip up international treaties, that would bully and silence national courts, that would intimidate the press, that is nothing less than this.

The forces of democratic backsliding.

A story that we are all too familiar within Europe. A story, in our own times we have seen told in Eastern Europe. We have seen told in Central Europe and we now have those who would tell it in Western Europe.

When Nigel Farage attacks, judges and mobilises grievance against the courts

This is his playbook. This is the price he would have us pay.

That's why in our elections —

They shall not pass.

They why in your elections —

They shall not pass.

That why across Europe —

They shall not pass.

Let us stop them.

By never lose sight of it - the purpose we stand for.

These are the stakes we are fighting for - a free and fair Europe with Britain its greatest friend.

And let us fight for it together

As an alliance, as an international, as a family

That stands for justice for all.