Jeremy Corbyn: Labour can rebuild the country

This year’s Labour Party Conference is the biggest since I was elected leader. It reflects the growth of our party in all regions and nations of the UK. 

Thousands of people coming from across the UK to attend one of our biggest ever conferences know that the public are receptive to our message of change – that we are ready to rebuild the country for the many, not the few.

We are the fifth richest country in the world, yet one million families are forced to use food banks. The NHS, the Labour Party’s greatest achievement, is in crisis as A&E units record their worst ever performance. UK school budgets have been cut for the first time in 20 years. But, set against this, we have more billionaires than ever before. And that is due to unacceptable political choices, not economic necessity.

The Tory government has done all it can to look after the interests of its wealthy donors. But it is more detached than ever from the realities of people’s everyday struggles.

That’s why, on Brexit, the Tories are putting the needs of party before country. They are too divided to negotiate among themselves, let alone with the EU. They flirt with a ‘no deal Brexit’ that many of their hard line race-to-the-bottom ideologues would welcome. But that would be a disaster for people’s jobs and living standards, and trigger a crisis in Northern Ireland.

Our priorities on Brexit are clear. We will fight for a deal which puts jobs and living standards first because we are focused on the needs of the many.

Throughout my time in Scotland this summer, I witnessed first-hand the damage the Tories have done in the last eight years. I especially remember a meeting in Glasgow North, organised by our excellent candidate Pamela Duncan-Glancy, where I was able to meet and learn from people about their struggles with austerity.

The SNP has timidly accepted the Tory dogma of austerity – it has accepted that the people of Scotland should be ripped off by a rigged system. Rather than stand up to the Tories and challenge austerity, the SNP Scottish Government has instead acted as a conveyor belt for Tory cuts and focused on its dream of Scottish independence at the expense of the basic living standards of Scottish people. That’s why we face the disgraceful reality that 230,000 children in Scotland live in poverty. And that’s why 430,000 Scots earn less than the living wage.

The political dividing line in Scotland could not be clearer. On the one hand, there is Labour’s plan to invest in and transform our economy; to rebuild the economy so that it works for all of us. On the other, is further austerity and the hardship that comes with it, courtesy of the SNP and the Tories.

And we know exactly what the SNP vision for Scotland would be after publication of the report of the so-called ‘Sustainable Growth Commission’ established by Nicola Sturgeon. In reality, it would mean cuts, and a decade of further austerity and a race-to-the-bottom on corporation tax and workers’ rights.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

At our conference, we will outline how we will transform and rebuild our society so that it works for the many. How we will breathe new life into our communities that have been held back by years of cuts and underinvestment, an ideological fixation with an economic system that works against them, and the hollowing out of industries that held people together and provided decent jobs.

We will ensure a stronger future for industry with better jobs and opportunities in every part of the country, especially in those areas held back by successive governments that have ignored industrial decline while bailing out bankers and high finance.

We launched our Build it in Britain campaign in Glasgow where I was delighted to meet brilliant young apprentices – they are our future. I announced that we will give contracts to build Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships to British shipyards. By doing this, we will create well paid jobs for workers with a proud industrial heritage, fuelling the tax revenues that fund our public services and helping us to rebuild communities and increase living standards for all.

by Liam Kirkaldy

Conference season and the UK's divided parties

We will end the crises in our NHS, in housing and across our public services. We will end the cost of living crisis – we do not believe that precarious work, stagnant wages, and a loss of control over how the economy works are inevitable.

Instead of destroying workers’ livelihoods and rights, we will ensure workers’ rights match the changing nature of the economy. We will invest in infrastructure and in our people, with extra teachers, nurses and police. We will revive our dying high streets, and help communities to rebuild themselves.

We will do this by putting the people who have been held back by a rigged system at the heart of what we do. We are a party of socialists and democrats. And that is why our plan for rebuilding the country for the many will be built on democracy from top to bottom.

Just as we are reinvigorating our party’s democracy, so too will we overhaul our national democracy. That’s why we will abolish the House of Lords, and that’s why we will bring in reforms to ensure we have a genuinely free and democratic media that can be trusted by British people.

Labour in Scotland is growing stronger, and so is our commitment to go further than any government has gone before to bring real and lasting change to the people of Scotland.