People sometimes say to me politicians are all the same. That couldn’t be further from the truth. So let me explain what I stand for, in the simplest terms.
For me, everything starts with this: our country is currently set up only to work for a privileged few at the top. It’s time to level the playing field so it works for us all.
When David Cameron talks about the economic recovery, most people in Britain are left wondering why they aren’t feeling its benefits. They want to know why, when they work so hard, their living standards are falling; why, when they make a decent living, they can’t afford to buy a house; and why, against the experience of every generation before us, their kids are worse off than they are.
Or let me put it another way: people are asking why we have zero-hours contracts while some at the top seem to get away with paying zero tax. The same rigged system that lets most people down allows a privileged few to grow ever more wealthy.
This widening inequality is no accident; it is the direct result of the Tories’ values and their beliefs about how Britain should be run.
- They believe that insecurity is the way you make people work harder.
- They think low pay is the way we should compete in the world.
- They trust that markets will always get the right outcome.
- They believe the only answer for our public services is to hand them over to private firms — our NHS included.
These ideas failed us in the past and they are failing us now.
Underpinning these ideas is a set of values I abhor: the view that the success of the country depends on a few at the top, and that the rest of us should be content to sit patiently and wait for some scraps to fall from their table.
My own values could not be more different from those of this government.
- I believe it’s essential that people are rewarded fairly for their hard work — and that we cannot live in a country where chief executives get pay rises 10, 20, 30 times as large as their workers, year on year on year.
- I believe that each generation should do better than the last.
- I believe that decent public services are the foundation of who we are as a country — and that the NHS is the embodiment of that.
- I believe that no vested interest — no bank or energy company or any other rich or powerful group or person — should be allowed to take advantage of the rest of us.
Above all I believe that Britain only succeeds when working people succeed.
If this is a vision that you believe is right for Britain,
I need your help to win the election in six months’ time, because we will only win if everyone who wants change fights for it.
We’re going to do it door by door, street by street, town by town.
We’re going to talk to friends, neighbours, and communities about our ambitions for our country. We’re going to chip in small donations to club together against the Tories’ millionaires.
When you’re deciding whether or not to get involved, remember what we’re fighting for:
- Energy bills frozen until 2017
- An £8 minimum wage
- The end of exploitative zero-hours contracts
- Guaranteed jobs for young people
- 200,000 more homes built a year
- The end of the bedroom tax
- Reform of our banks so they work for our businesses once again
- A cut in business rates to help small businesses
- Apprenticeships alongside every government contract
- An end to recruitment agencies only hiring from abroad
- The repeal of the Health and Social Care Act
- Tens of thousands more doctors, nurses, midwives and care workers
Together, these measures add up to a country that starts to work for the majority again.
Millions of people in this country are resting their hopes on us fighting for a fairer, better Britain in six months’ time, and I will not let them down.
In six months a Labour government can begin the business of changing our country for the better. Help us get there: http://labour.tw/1tYncgM
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