Bill Rammell's speech at Labour Friends of NATO conference event

Thank you for being here. It’s a pleasure to join a room of people who understand something fundamental: peace doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because nations choose to stand together.

When I served as Armed Forces Minister, I saw first-hand what that choice looks like. It looks like British troops training shoulder-to-shoulder with allies from Norway to Turkey. It looks like intelligence shared at speed to stop threats before they reach our shores. And it looks like a simple but powerful promise — an attack on one is an attack on all. That commitment has kept Europe secure for over 75 years.

NATO is often described as a military alliance. It is that — but it’s also a values alliance. It binds democracies together. It says that sovereignty matters, that borders matter, and that people should be able to live free from coercion and fear. In a world where authoritarian states are more assertive, that principle is not abstract. It is fundamentally urgent.

We face a Russian threat which is existential. And a US, led by a President turning his back on NATO and our collective security. NATO has never mattered more.

This Labour network is hugely important. It celebrates the 1945 Labour Government’s leading role in founding NATO. Something as a party we’ve sometimes forgotten over the last 75 years.

And it lobbies and campaigns for a strong NATO and it argues robustly against those who seek to undermine UK support for NATO.

Tonight is about recognising our commitment to NATO. It’s about reaffirming that collective defence is not a relic of the past but the backbone of our future stability.

Let’s build on that together.

Bill Rammell was the Member of Parliament for Harlow (1997 - 2010) and Former Minister for Foreign Office (2008-9) and Defence (2009-10).