International Day of Democracy

Andrew Lewin Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Sir John. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Rachel Blake) not just on securing the debate, but on a powerful speech, and especially on her tribute to how our Parliament is evolving. It is vital to recognise that we have agency in this place and that there is cause for hope.

Not only is it customary to open a speech in that way, but it speaks to something that is core to our democracy: that civility matters. We make progress as a society and as a country through considered debate and by contesting ideas. We value the opinions of those on all sides of the political divide. The process of building consensus is invariably a strength and not a weakness.

People who represent different political views or parties can be, and often are, our friends. I consider everyone who serves in the House of Commons to be a colleague. Many will be my political opponents, but they will never be my enemies. That may seem self-evident in a mature democracy such as the United Kingdom, but we live in a time when democracy needs renewal and reaffirmation.

We can take nothing for granted, and the comments of Elon Musk on Saturday demonstrate why. At a rally that was purportedly about the uniting the kingdom, Musk told the crowd that

“violence is coming to you”

and that Parliament should be dissolved, on the basis that he did not like the result of the last election very much.

Since 1929, we have run fully democratic elections in our country, with universal suffrage for men and women. Our democracy has endured and grown stronger through the horrors of war with the Nazis, global financial crises and a pandemic. We are not going to be cowed by a foreign billionaire who does not live in this country and cannot even pretend to understand it.

We must not overstate the political abilities of this man. A couple of days ago, Musk announced that his AI tool, Grok, would once again be sent for reprogramming because it inconveniently shared facts that contradicted its master’s argument. If he cannot win an argument with his own AI tool, he is not going to win an argument with the British people.

We should have confidence in our democracy but never be complacent about its future. We live in a world of mass information, where private companies that design social media algorithms hold more power to shape political debate than the editors of newspapers or the producers of broadcast news. The debate online has coarsened, which is precisely why our conduct in Parliament matters more than ever: we have to set an example. At times, it may feel quaint that we refer to each other in this place as hon. Members, but there is honour in debate, disagreement and democracy.

There is no doubt that we live in fragile times. Putin has brought war to Europe, and I am speaking on the morning that the United Nations commission of inquiry has concluded that Israel’s leadership has committed four of the five acts of genocide defined under the 1948 genocide convention.

The times we live in make it all the more important to look back at how democracy became a beacon of hope after we emerged from the second world war, the darkest chapter in our history. The response then to suffering was not to turn inward, to stigmatise or to attack others—it was the opposite. Signed by 50 nations in June 1945, the UN charter’s purpose was to reaffirm

“to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women”.

It went on to say that all signatories must

“practice tolerance and live together in peace with one another as good neighbours”.

This country was at the vanguard of defending democracy even in our darkest hour. If a previous generation could succeed in championing democracy then, we can and must do it now.

[Sir John Hayes (in the Chair)]

I call Tom Morrison. Pithy please, Tom.