Tony Blair's Bornemouth Speech

They kept people down. They stunted people's potential. Year after year. Decade after decade.

These forces of conservatism chain us not only to an outdated view of our people’s potential but of our nation’s potential. What threatens the nation-state today is not change, but the refusal to change in a world opening up, becoming ever more interdependent.

The old air of superiority based on past glory must give way to the ambition to succeed, based on the merit of what Britain stands for today.

For the last half century, we have been torn between Europe and the United States, searching for our identity in the post-Empire world.

I pose this simple question: is our destiny with Europe or not?

If the answer is no, then we should leave. But we would leave an economic union in which 50 per cent of our trade is done, on which millions of British jobs depend.

Our economic future would be uncertain.

But what is certain is that we would not be a power. Britain would no longer play a determining part in the future of the continent to which we belong. That would be the real end of one thousand years of history.

We can choose this destiny. But we should do it with our eyes open and our senses alert, not blindfold and dulled by the incessant propaganda of Europhobes.

The single currency is, of course, a decision that must be dependent on the economic conditions; and on the consent of the British people in a referendum.

If we believe our destiny is with Europe, then let us leave behind the muddling through, the hesitation, the half-heartedness which has characterised British relations with Europe for forty years and play our part with confidence and pride giving us the chance to defeat the forces of conservatism, economic and political, that hold Europe back too.

There is no choice between Europe and America.