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Rachel Reeves delivers 2024 Mais Lecture; Part 9 of 27 ENGLAND: London: Bayes Business School: INT Rachel Reeves MP (Shadow Chancellor) speech SOT. - "Indeed, in recent years, we have paid the price for neglecting our energy security – with households and businesses left acutely exposed to a terms of trade shock, and its inflationary consequences. In a changing world, Britain has been behind the curve. We have seen the cost of neglecting the delicate balance between flexibility and security; between the allure of just-in-time production and the demand for resilience; and of turning a blind eye to where things are made and who they are owned by. The philosopher Bernard Williams wrote of the ‘first political question’ – ‘the securing of order, protection, safety, trust, and the conditions of cooperation.’ The ‘first’ political question, ‘because solving it is the condition of solving, indeed posing, any others.’ That question pertains not just to the size of our military or the strengths of our borders, but to economics too. Now, you might ask: doesn’t ‘economic security’ imply a denial of ‘risk’, the motor of innovation and entrepreneurship? So let me say this. Without the promise of stability, how can business invest with confidence? Without security, how can we ask an entrepreneur to take the plunge and start a new business? Without a safety net to fall back on, how can we expect an ordinary person to retrain, take a new job or change career? When change increasingly appears disruptive and the future darkly uncertain, there is a natural urge to recoil from change and seek shelter from the future altogether. Securonomics is about providing the platform from which to take risks; not to retreat from an uncertain future, but to embrace change and the opportunities it brings with clarity of purpose and stability of direction. To know that people can stand and fall on their own merits, not on the basis of events far beyond their control. ...