Thank you, Digby, for that warm and typically robust Birmingham welcome.
Gathered here in this hall are the representatives of Britain's great Party of Progress.
The Party of enterprise and discovery, of liberty and the law, of the wide open seas and globalfree trade.
And we meet to lay out our case before the nation and to ask it to choose the future not thepast.
In Broad Street, just around the corner from this conference, stands the statue of the GoldenBoys.
The three great British pioneers:
Matthew Boulton, William Murdoch, and James Watt, are studying intently their plans for thenew steam engine.
It's an image that captures a golden age for our country, when the spirit of invention was aliveand the marriage of business and science made everything possible.
A time when we faced the future with confidence, and weren't afraid of the big answers to thebig questions.
I want us to be that Britain.
Let's raise the ambition of the nation so that everyone has the chance to succeed.
I believe it is perfectly possible for Britain to be the most prosperous major country on earth.The most prosperous, the most dynamic, the most creative.
But only if we, in our generation, provide the big answers to the big questions.
Only if we choose the future not the past.
For anyone who doubts this is possible, just think about what we've done together these lastfour years.
Four years ago, our economy was in crisis, our country was on the floor.
But we did what we Britons do best when we're being counted out.
We picked ourselves up, we sorted ourselves out and got back in the fight.
We set out our long term economic plan and worked through it.