This will most likely be the last time that I will speak at length as Prime Minister, and I would like today to share some personal reflections on the state of politics in our country and around the world.
Now I've lived politics for half a century.
From stuffing envelopes for my local party in my school years to serving as a local councillor, fighting a by-election, winning a seat, serving for 12 years on the opposition front bench and for 9 years in the Cabinet as Home Secretary and Prime Minister.
Throughout that time, in every job I have done, I've been inspired by the enormous potential that working in politics and taking part in public life holds.
The potential to serve your country, to improve peoples' lives and – in however big or small a way – to make the world a better place.
Both domestically and internationally, in substance and in tone, I'm worried about the state of politics.
That worry stems from a conviction that the values on which all of our successes have been founded cannot be taken for granted.
They may look to us as old as the hills, we might think that they will always be there,
but establishing the superiority of those values over the alternatives was the hard work of centuries of sacrifice.
And to ensure that liberal inheritance can endure for generations to come, we today have a responsibility to be active in conserving it, If we do not, we will all pay the price: rich and poor, strong and weak, powerful and powerless.
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