Ever since he became the leader of the Labour Party, Ed
Miliband has been talking about how we need to harness the talents of everyone
– and how those in power should be governing for the whole country, not just a
few at the top.
That’s what he means when he says that he wants ours to be a
One Nation Labour Party – one which is rooted in the lives of men and women in
all of our communities and which, in government, will create an economy that
works for working people.
Last week at the TUC and over the next week, Ed will set out how we’re going to do that.
At the TUC he took aim at the government, who are busy congratulating themselves and saying
that they’ve turned the economy around when ordinary families know things are
getting harder not easier.
People in our area know the truth. Living standards have now
been falling for longer than at any time since 1870. There are a million young
people looking for work. Long-term unemployment is higher than at any time in a
generation. And there are 1.4 million people stuck in part-time jobs.
In the face of this cost of living crisis what is David
Cameron’s priority? Standing up for the wealthiest few by cutting taxes for
millionaires while asking everyone else to pay more. The Prime Minister is out
of touch, and is failing to turn things around for hard working families in Medway and Aylesford.
Ed has said that if Labour were in power, we would make
fundamentally different choices. We would offer a compulsory jobs guarantee to
young people, getting them a job with proper training on at least the minimum
wage – funded by a tax on bankers’ bonuses. We’d increase the number of
apprenticeships, set up a British Investment Bank to get money to small
businesses, and build more homes.
And, as Ed has said, we would act to stop the abuse of
workers who are being exploited on zero-hour contracts. Some people are on call
all day, without any guarantee of going to work. Or, after years on a regular
contract, they’re now trapped on zero-hour contracts with no idea of what their
wages will be next week. I really welcome Ed’s announcement that the next
Labour Government will put a stop to the exploitation of these contracts.
Of course, the headlines out of Ed’s speech are also about
his proposed reforms of our relationship with the trade unions. People may
wonder why this matters to them.
It matters because we are changing the Labour Party so that
we can change the country – and carry out all those reforms that will really
make a difference to people’s lives.
The Conservatives don’t represent the whole country as Vince Cable said yesterday. Under
David Cameron, they hold working people, as members of trade unions, in
contempt – effectively writing off whole sections of our society. Being One
Nation is about governing for the whole country – and that’s why Ed is arguing
for a new kind of Labour Party. One with a new relationship with individual
trade union members.
Currently, we have 3 million working men and women formally
affiliated to Labour. But the vast majority of them play no role. They are
affiliated in name only. They don’t really have a voice – and we aren’t hearing
what they have to tell us. We want to make every member a real part of the
Labour Party – and we want people to make a positive choice to join us and to
make their voice and their stories heard.
We could become a Labour Party not of 200,000 people, but of
500,000 – or many more. A party that’s rooted in every community. A real
movement.
This is of course a challenge, and there are strong views.
Like all challenges, it’s a risk.
But it’s a bigger risk not to change. We’ve seen that Ed Miliband is determined that this change will happen. I really support
what he’s doing – and want to play my part in getting more working people
involved in the Labour Party here in our area.
If you want to see our country
change so that everybody is getting a fair chance, and that our government
works for all of us – not just a few at the top – I hope you’ll join me.
No comments:
Post a Comment