Last week, conference showed the best of the Labour party: our collective strength, united, and with purpose. Our message to the British public was clear: that we offer decency, not decline, and that we’re determined to build a Britain that is better for all.
As education secretary, I’ve led this mission from the front: announcing the roll-out of free breakfast clubs, the return of maintenance grants for low-income students – delivering opportunity for young people, and showing that education is the key to giving them the freedom to choose their own path in life. This year, I’ve been putting our party’s values of solidarity, compassion and social justice into action, delivering on the pledges we made at the last election.
But none of this has happened by accident. There’s a reason I’ve been able to give millions of free breakfasts to our poorest children, that I’ve been able to revive Sure Start for a new generation, that I’ve secured the biggest ever expansion of free school meals that will lift 100,000 more children out of poverty.
It happened because I had a seat at the table, because I had the power in government to fight for policies that unite our whole movement.
But I’m not going to stop there. I want a mandate to do more: on tackling child poverty, our party’s historic mission, and to spread more opportunity for young people, delivering the policies that our members want to see.
Make no mistake, change is on the ballot in this deputy leadership election. The choice is what kind of change. Members can choose to push our government to be bolder, to go further and do more with me as their voice at the cabinet table, or they can choose the kind of division and disunity that fills the pages of the rightwing papers and energises our opponents.
Choosing that path isn’t risk-free or without consequence. It would be a mandate for more of the disruption we’ve seen in recent weeks, permission to throw more stones, to create more distraction from our crucial mission of giving working people better lives. It would be a vote for instability, a vote to divide our party, to pit regions against each other, and hand our political opponents the upper hand with crucial elections just around the corner. It’s a vote, quite simply, that puts us back on the dark road back to opposition.
After 14 years of Tory misery, the last thing our members want, and the last thing our country needs, is to take that path. I want all of us to come together to tell that hopeful story about how our policies are changing the lives of young people.
Too often, Labour’s achievements in key policy areas have gone unnoticed because of unforced errors, and strong announcements have been obscured by self-generated noise. It frustrates me, just as it frustrates you.
I’m not going to pretend we’ve not made mistakes as a government. I’ve been the first to admit it – that’s why I’ll never shy away from offering challenge where I think we should do better. I know the importance of fighting my corner and airing concerns, but I do so where those concerns belong – in private.
And while I’m not going to defend our errors, neither will I shy away from promoting our successes. That is what the deputy leader’s role is all about. Angela Rayner knew this well: it’s why she encouraged us to focus on the 90% of things we got right, rather than the 10% of things we got wrong.
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We all have a duty to turn this government around, not turn in on ourselves. Our country depends on it. And as deputy leader, I will be taking the fight to Reform, the Greens, Plaid Cymru and the SNP. I’ll be campaigning with Labour members, uniting our party and getting things done in government, not shouting from the sidelines. I will put Labour’s heart and soul into this government and make our members proud.
Back me to unite our party, deliver change for working people and secure that second Labour term we all want to see.
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