SPEECH BY SIR GRAHAM WATSON MEP TO THE LIBERAL DEMOCRATS’ WESTERN COUNTIES REGIONAL CONFERENCE, HOLIDAY INN, TAUNTON, SATURDAY 11 JUNE 2011.

Chairman, thank you for your kind words about my knighthood. I will never forget Robert Burns' poem 'A man's a man for all that', in which he mocks those with titles but little merit: 'The rank is but the guinea's stamp/ The man's the gold for all that'.

Some of you know I am not a fan of the institution of monarchy and the honours list system. I hold it to be an anachronism in a 21st century democracy. But every country has its way of honouring achievement and this is Britain's. I consider this honour to be not mine but ours; what I have done we have done together, through our joint efforts and commitment.

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Friends, this conference has allowed us a useful look into the future, into how we must continue to build a truly Liberal society through our work at all levels of government. Allow me to thank all those who've come today to share their ideas and expertise.

In closing the conference, however, I invite you to cast your minds back thirteen months, to 10^th May 2010. To the period after the General Election when we were in talks with the other parties on forming a government.

That evening the Liberal Democrat parliamentary negotiating team met their Labour counterparts. As David Laws reminds us in his excellent book 22 days in May, the attitude of the Labour Party's negotiators - towards a deal which parliamentary arithmetic would in any case barely have allowed - was lukewarm at best.

I quote from David Laws book: 'Quarter to eight came and went, and there was no sign of the Labour negotiating team. We wondered if there had been some problem … Eventually, around 8 pm, the door to the conference room opened, and in stepped Peter Mandelson, Andrew Adonis, Ed Balls and Ed Miliband, joined on this occasion by Harriet Harman. … As the talks proceeded, we realised we appeared to be negotiating with two separate Labour teams, with their own distinct policy and political agendas. One team wanted a deal. The other didn't.'

The fact is, Labour was a spent force after thirteen years in office. Discredited. Defeated. Divided.

Many of you will remember too the conference we held at the NEC in Birmingham on 16 May, when some 2000 of us voted to approve a coalition with the Conservatives with barely a dozen party members abstaining or opposed.

We went into government with the Conservatives not because we had become Conservatives; but because Brown and Blair had leftBritainin such a mess that only a government with a working majority in the Commons could start to sort it out.

We went into government because the voters wanted us there; and we wanted the chance to promote atWestminsterthe Liberal policies we have long promoted elsewhere.

We went in to government, in the words of a Spanish resistance fighter quoted at the time by Lord McNally, 'not for honour or glory or medals or pay, but with eyes wide open, for we knew no other way'.

It was our experience of coalition in local government, much of it in this region - and inScotlandandWales- which gave us the confidence to create a coalition in the Commons. We'll not agree with everything the Tories do. Indeed, we may to have to suffer the entire alphabet of Tory politics, from Aaargh to Zzzzz.

But there must be no misunderstanding of where Liberal Democrats stand. As the Japanese say "Misunderstandings don't exist: only the failure to communicate".

We have tremendous intellectual horse power in our party. let us use it to get our messages across.

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The first message is to remind people of the harsh truth: that Labour left our country in a parlous state. Even now, the government has to borrow four hundred million pounds every day, just to get by. It's the equivalent of a new primary school being built every twenty minutes.

The second is to tell people how, in barely a year, we have already achieved a lot. The national debt is down by ten billion pounds. The cost of government borrowing has fallen because investors are convinced of our determination to balance the nation's books. 'The post-crisis repair of theUKeconomy is under way', as the IMF stated in the opening sentence of a report this week .

The economy is growing and the private sector created 400,000 jobs over the past year. The plans to cut spending further, but fairly, are in place.

And we've proven our Liberal impact by not allowing the Tories to tax the poorest to sort out the mess. Nearly one million people took home more of their earnings last month. Because we've taken them out of income tax altogether. A further two and a half million are benefiting from tax cuts. That's what Liberal Democrats have done.

What would the Tories have done with that money? They'd have raised the threshold for inheritance tax! Tax breaks for those who already have.

The third thing to tell people is that despite cutting spending, two and a half billion pounds of public money is being spent on education for those with the greatest needs. We pledged to do this in our election manifesto. No such pledge was in the Tory manifesto. That is the impact of Liberal Democrats in government.

I could list five focus leaflets full of achievements, including most recently the decision on the world's first Green Development Bank. And if we've achieved all that in one year, think what we'll achieve in the next four!

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And think for a moment about how we've done it, with only one MP to every six Tories!

As John Stuart Mill said, ours are the intelligent ones.

Don Foster, with nearly twenty years experience in Parliament. David Heath, Steve Webb, now atWestminsterfor 14 years. David Laws and Annette Brooke, each for a decade. Jeremy Brown, Martin Horwood, Steve Williams, since 2005. And the new blood of Tessa Munt and Duncan Hames. Three of them with experience of running things in local government. Three now with experience at ministerial level.

They're a formidable team. Working for the west country. And working forBritain.

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Some of the newspapers speak of a Liberal Democrat collapse. But as soon as we formed a coalition with the Tories we were bound to lose the Labour voters who joined us out of despair with Blair and Brown. The same would have happened in reverse had we propped up Labour.

Yes, we suffered losses in the local elections. Of 270 seats defended here in the West we held only 220. There are lessons to be learned which we've studied today. But it's hardly a collapse.

We made spectacular gains in the Cotswolds: the best in the country! We won seats inBathand North East Somerset, where we've taken back control. And inBristolwe took 25% of the vote!

Paul Hodgkinson, Paul Crossley, Barbara Janke. Winners in the West!

I'd like to pay tribute too to three others.

To Jill Shortland, who we are proud to see honoured today for her work on Somerset County Council.

To Tim Carroll, who stood down from the leadership in South Somerset District after a marathon nine years. Tim's successor inherits a strong ruling group to take forward to another quarter of a century in power.

And Richard Pinnock, who leaves his post but not his party after proving his perspicacity, patience and persistence.

Thank you, all three. We are in your debt.

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Of course, not all has been rosy. Our leaders have been vilified over tuition fees. Our candidates signed a pledge we'd have kept had we been a majority government, but in a coalition we could not. But despite the press speculation, no university seeking to charge over six thousand pounds has yet signed an agreement with the Director of Fair Access; so nobody knows yet how much they will charge.

The key point for us is that under our reforms every graduate will pay back less every month than they do at present. A quarter of graduates will pay back less in total than under the present arrangements. Not in the Tory manifesto. That is the impact of Liberal Democrats in government. And we've abolished the up-front fees which put off so many part-time students. So don't fall for Labour's propaganda. For Liberal Democrats, university is about being able to learn, not about being able to pay.

Nor are we out to privatise the NHS. The pressures of an ageing and a growing population mean we have to adapt. Doing nothing is simply not an option. But the Tory Bill has been sent back to committee - by Liberal Democrat MPs. That's the impact of Liberal Democrats in government.

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Make no mistake. Things will get tougher. Next year's local elections may be tougher still. Public spending cuts will begin to bite. And the popular press will pursue its pogrom against our people.

But when the going gets tough, the tough gotta get going. So let's start our preparations now. It is never too early to campaign. Remember our Liberal Democrat maxim: where we work, we win.

I've started already on our campaign for the next European election. It could be our toughest in twenty years. Of course, I hope you'll select me again as a candidate when the time comes. But there'll be no let up in my campaigning meanwhile. Whether it's working with you in the local elections, campaigning for euro funds for superfast broadband and the like, or taking on UKIP and the Tory europhobes, you'll continue to see a lot of me.

And I hope I'll see a lot of you in Lychett Matravers in Purbeck between now and the by-election on 7 July to give us overall control.

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Liberal Democrats are not people who opt for an easy life. I spend my time in Parliament on the continent campaigning for policies to curb climate change, to meet the millenium development goals, to promote economic recovery through trade - and to get better control of theBrusselsbureaucrats.

The challenges facing EU member states are now so vast there is no way we can tackle them alone. Challenges like world population growth and migration, climate change and energy security, international crime and terrorism. Challenges we can only get on top of together.

The contours of globalisation are drawn not inLondonbut in the computer campuses of west coastAmerica, in the factories ofChina, in the call centres ofIndia. And the European Union has often been better at helping people grasp the benefits of globalisation than at shielding them from its adverse effects.

But where the Right is wrong is this. The world would not be a safer or better place if the great tribes ofEuropewere still apart.

Human history is increasingly a race between education and catastrophe. The fact is, we are no longer independent; rather we are inter-dependent. The sooner our people recognise this, the better. RememberDarwin: "It's not the strongest of the species who survive, nor necessarily the most intelligent. It is those who are the most adaptable to change."

I hear the Tories are currently girning about euro judges. Saying they are 'trampling overUKsovereignty'. But as Tim Garton-Ash has pointed out, theStrasbourgcourt they complain about has nothing to do with the EU. It's part of the Council of Europe, which Winston Churchill helped set up, which is entirely inter-governmental. The court's job is to enforce the European Convention on Human Rights, largely drafted by a British lawyer.

If they've a problem with the EU, from later this year they'll be able to take a case against it to this independent, international court overseen by a strictly inter-governmental body. And there's nothing in our commitments to the Court of Human Rights to stop us having our own Bill of Rights. The self-styled party of law and order should be jumping for joy, not gnashing its knee-jerk nationalist teeth.

I don't pretend sellingEuropeis easy. One voter said to me recently, after reading my email newsletter, "If I'd known you were going to spend so much time over there I'd never have voted for you." But I gave up the leadership of the European Parliament's Liberal Group two years ago to spend more time here, with my family and with you. To fight for the Liberal Britain I want to see now that we are in government. And as in my campaigning I criss-cross this beautiful corner ofEngland, from Canford Heath to Cotswold and from the chalk downs to the Blackdowns, I rarely regret it.

Friends, this is Liberal Democrat heartland. From John Locke ofSomersetto Thomas Hobbes of Wiltshire, from Walter Bagehot to Frank Byers to Paddy Ashdown we have inspired the westcountry. Our numbers have taken a knock, but our dreams have not dimmed nor our vision evaporated. The Liberal Democrat commitment is clear. Our ability to achieve - at local, national or european level - unsurpassed. We can, and will, go on to greater strengths.

Hold your nerve. Redouble your resolve. Go to it!

ENDS