It’s time to come home to Labour. That is my election message to Daily Mirror readers.
The choice on 12 December is between a Labour government that will repair the damage done to your communities by a decade of austerity, or a continuation of Tory cuts and crises.
Working people know which Party is on their side. Which Party offers real change – and can be trusted to deliver it.
It will never be Boris Johnson’s Conservatives. They are the Party of the well-to-do and the privileged, and we can be sure they will continue to put the interests of the rich first.
Johnson thinks that Brexit is his trump card. And I know that many Mirror readers voted to leave the European Union in 2016.
I can understand why they did. I don’t live in the metropolitan bubble that many politicians seem to.
(Image: Getty)
Communities felt abandoned. Left behind as decent well-paid work was relocated elsewhere, town centres rotted, the sense of stability and security was destroyed and their opinions ignored.
People are concerned about the greedy bosses who use and abuse migrant labour to undercut wages and conditions. It’s not the migrant workers who are to blame but the unscrupulous Companies and Agencies.
But I tell you this. If the Tories get re-elected nothing is going to change. The left-behind won’t catch up. Our towns will be left to rot for another generation.
Only Labour will fund an investment programme on the scale needed to fund the jobs and industries of the future.
Only Labour will stop the undercutting of wages with Labour Market Regulations.
Video Unavailable
Only Labour will rebuild our public services by taxing the super-rich and the corporate elite who can afford to pay more.
Only Labour will end the scandal of people depending on foodbanks to survive, and lift children and pensioners alike out of poverty.
Only Labour will create a real Living Wage of £10 an hour minimum, and end insecurity at work by giving all workers new rights and abolishing zero hours contracts and bogus self-employment.
And only Labour will save the NHS from privatisation under the Tories, and give our hospitals, doctors and nurses the funding they need to do their job.
(Image: PA)
That is the sort of programme that our communities need. This election is about far more than “getting Brexit done”, which will not on its own solve a single pressing problem.
That does not mean that we can just forget about Brexit. Unite has all along recognised the importance of delivering on the 2016 referendum result.
But Boris Johnson’s deal is a bad Tory deal that will see many thousands of jobs lost in our manufacturing industries, as if we haven’t lost enough already. Brexit does not need to risk jobs nor the sale of the NHS to Donald Trump’s pals. We can do better than that.
That is why Labour will negotiate a Brexit deal that protects jobs and the rights of workers and consumers – rights that the Tories will rip up as soon as they get the chance.
Labour is committed to negotiating that deal in three months and then putting it back to you to confirm, just as trade unions ask their members to endorse any deal we negotiate on their behalf, as well as giving you the option to Remain.
That would really get Brexit done – in the interests of the country as a whole, bringing people together.
So Labour is fighting this election on a programme that addresses all the concerns of working people. Labour and only Labour will make the changes our nations need.
It is time for all working men and women to elect that Labour government.
Mirror readers, please come home to Labour, for all our children’s futures.
