Final Friday, I stood on the steps of Downing Road and made a promise to the British folks. I stated the work of change would start instantly. And I meant it.
My new cupboard hit the bottom operating. We’ve lifted the ban on onshore wind. We’ve created a nationwide wealth fund to spend money on and develop our economic system. We’ve met NHS bosses to get the 40,000 additional NHS appointments we want every week and 700,000 pressing dental appointments up and operating as shortly as attainable.
The Division for Training is resuming and increasing its recruitment marketing campaign to kickstart our promise to rent 6,500 new academics. We’re taking emergency measures to tug the justice system again from the brink of collapse. And, on day one, we scrapped the Rwanda gimmick and started establishing a brand new Border Safety Command to smash the people-smuggling gangs for good.
Now’s the time for politics as public service. A authorities dedicated to not its self-preservation however to uniting the nation within the shared mission of nationwide renewal. The beginning of the highway again to restoring folks’s hope and religion that politics generally is a pressure for good. No extra gimmicks, lies and self-serving self-obsession – this authorities is aware of we’ve got an obligation to the folks we’re elected to serve.
And the primary obligation of any authorities is to maintain our nation secure. So it was a privilege to attend Nato this week and reconfirm our dedication to the alliance in a unstable world. I met President Zelenskiy and guaranteed him of our persevering with assist for Ukraine in opposition to Russian aggression for so long as it takes. And President Biden and I confirmed the particular relationship between our two nations stays as sturdy as ever.
This authorities will construct stronger relationships at residence in addition to overseas to make everybody higher off. My first journey as prime minister was to go to Scotland, Wales and Northern Eire to fulfill the devolved leaders, and guarantee them that this Labour authorities is not going to exploit division for political expedience. The success of our nationwide leaders is the success of our nation, and we’ll work with them to ship the assist they want and the alternatives that individuals deserve.
It doesn’t matter what color rosette folks put on. I’ll work with anybody who needs to see our nation succeed. That’s why, on Tuesday, I met all of the metro mayors to kickstart our plans for native development. Choices are finest made by folks with pores and skin within the sport, which is why I’ll get energy out of Westminster and put it within the palms of native leaders. We’re empowering them to ship for his or her area people on every part from transport to housing.
And this can be a Labour get together that really displays the face of recent Britain. I’m so proud that amongst our 412 Labour MPs we’re inside touching distance of gender equality, and there’s been an enormous enhance in minority ethnic illustration. 13 new MPs have served our nation in our armed forces. And within the Labour get together we’ve got the largest cohort of LGBT+ representatives of any get together in any parliament wherever on this planet.
Within the cupboard, we’ve got individuals who know at first hand the distinction authorities could make in folks’s lives. We have now a housing secretary who grew up in council housing. An training secretary who relied on free faculty meals. And a well being secretary who relied on the NHS for his personal most cancers remedy. They signify the idea in aspiration that lies on the coronary heart of our get together. It doesn’t matter who you’re or what your background is – should you work arduous, it is best to – and can – be capable of get on in life. That’s the central mission of my authorities.
So we’ll serve Britain with critical options. However I’ve to warn folks from the beginning, fixing the basics gained’t be straightforward. Because the chancellor warned this week, our public funds are of their worst state because the second world conflict. Our prisons are in disaster. And the final authorities held its nostril whereas sewage flooded our seas and streams. At each stage, they ducked the arduous selections and swept the issues beneath the carpet.
Like a Downing Road get together, they’ve left a mountain of mess for this authorities to wash up. Boastful, reckless and irresponsible to the very finish, they’ll go down in historical past as the federal government that fiddled whereas the nation burned. They partied and profited out of the pandemic. They scrambled to advance their very own pursuits whereas thousands and thousands of individuals have been pushed into higher insecurity. They usually rewarded the individuals who helped crash the economic system with seats within the Home of Lords.
At finest, they overlooked their obligation to the nation. At worst, they all the time thought the nation was there to serve them. Underneath my watch, the chaos and self-service that turned commonplace beneath the Conservatives won’t ever occur once more. I’ve already began making these robust selections mandatory to wash up the mess and get us again on observe. That gained’t occur in a single day. The lengthy, arduous, affected person graft of creating folks’s lives higher is way harder than headline-grabbing gimmicks. It requires critical authorities – and that’s what you’ll all the time get from me.
We’ve been pushed down the highway of straightforward solutions earlier than, and we all know it leads us right into a useless finish. Snake-oil populism is seductive – it preys on folks’s hopes earlier than it betrays them. Self-serving ambition results in false guarantees that stoke division and finish in disappointment. My ambition is for the nation. The politics of service rebuilds belief by bringing folks collectively and delivering actual change.
I do know you gained’t choose us by our phrases, however by what we do now we’re on the pitch. So we’ll battle day by day till you imagine once more. After 14 years of injury, the daylight of hope is rising brighter. It’s not simply soccer that’s coming residence.
