Former chancellor George Osborne. REUTERS/Phil Noble Former British Chancellor George Osborne believes "western" values such as democracy, free trade, and open society are at risk of being "rolled back" and says people must "fight" to protect them.

Speaking at an event at the Bloomberg offices in London on Tuesday night, Osborne said: "At the moment, if you look around western societies, the support for democracy is declining, the forces of protectionism are rising, the concern about the pace of technology is growing, [and] technology is being used to echo back people's prejudices rather than challenge them."

Osborne, who was Chancellor of the Exchequer until July this year, highlighted the example of the troubled passage of the recent Canadian free-trade deal with the EU, CETA, as evidence of free trade being under threat. The deal, which took seven years to negotiate, was blocked by the Belgian region of Wallonia and it looked at one point like the entire thing could be scuppered, until the EU revised some of the deal points, which led to Wallonia eventually accepting the deal.

Osborne said: "How many people in this room can tell me what the benefits are of that free trade deal with Canada? In other words, we didn't go out and sell the advantages of free trade. We shouldn't be surprised — if we're not making an effort those of us who believe in free trade — that those who argue against free trade or more protectionism are out there in that vacuum we've created."

The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, TTIP, has likewise faced huge public opposition across Europe and the US. The agreement is a free trade deal between Europe and the United States that critics say is anti-democratic and will lower food safety, labour, and environmental standards. The deal has proved so unpopular that both US presidential candidates have pledged to abandon it.

They were hard fought for by our ancestors and we are going to have to fight for them again, start fighting now I would argue, and not assume they are just givens — George Osborne

Osborne told the audience on Tuesday night: "Some of the ideas we've taken for granted in this country and the United States, Europe, around thinking that it's necessarily a good thing to organise yourself as a democracy, it's necessarily a good thing that you have an open society, it's necessarily a good thing to have free trade — those things have to be fought for.

"They were hard fought for by our ancestors and we are going to have to fight for them again, start fighting now I would argue, and not assume they are just givens."

The former Chancellor said it requires "a collective effort" to protect ideas such as democracy and free trade, saying: "It was commonplace when I was a child because we faced a very clear external threat from Soviet Communism. A huge effort was put into making the case for a particular way of life and a particular way of organising our society. We rather gave up because we thought those ideas had conquered the world, but, actually, they're being rolled back."

"The basic idea is, get out there and fight for things you currently take for granted." Asked who would do this fighting, Osborne said: "Me, for a start."

'Remember that human beings have a vote'

Osborne was speaking on a panel with academics, "futurists," and technology entrepreneurs titled "A Glimpse into the Future," organised by early-stage technology investment fund ForceOverMass. The panel discussed advances such as driverless cars, A.I., and virtual reality.

Osborne cited the recent Uber employment verdict in the UK as an example of how people could object to technological change. Thomson Reuters Osborne, who is still the MP for Tatton, said he is "a great technology optimist" but said: "Remember that human beings have a vote. Some of these developments are going to cause really serious challenges to the way we organise our societies."

"We have to fight for the values we rather take for granted and second, look for the ways in which this technology can be used to benefit the maximum number of people and make sure they see it that way. Because if you just assume, as some technology pessimists do, that labour is going to become irrelevant and the holders of capital are going to become more powerful — just remember, the votes lie with labour."

He cited the recent Uber court case in Britain as an example of how technology could be opposed by people affected by it. Last week the courts declared that the taxi hailing app must treat drivers as employees rather than freelancers.

Osborne said: "The court judgment will be contested but it's just a reminder that while you may want to order the world in a particular way, other people get a vote."

He added: "All of these [technological] developments rely on open societies, liberal democracies, the free flow of information — all of those things can be turned off."