**It’s time to get behind working people and fix this national crisis**
A Labour government would bring bills down, provide a functioning NHS and get a grip on the crime plaguing our communities
KEIR STARMER
3 September 2022 • 8:34pm
The appointment of a fourth Tory prime minister in 12 years is no new dawn for Britain. As summer turns to autumn, the shadows of crisis are lengthening, looming over the whole country. There is no sign that either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss have grasped the scale of what is facing us, let alone possesses the answers to it.
The crisis we face is not just of the sacred – people having to cut back on luxuries or forego extravagance – but of the profane. For the first time in living memory, simply heating your home, going to the shops or filling up the car are sources of anxiety for millions of people. The centre is not holding. Things, it feels, are falling apart.
I came to politics after a long career. That makes me impatient. It also means I favour common-sense, practical solutions over ideological purity. If I were stepping into Downing Street this week, I’d ensure no one would pay a penny more for their energy bill this winter. I would fund that with a windfall tax on the unexpected, record profits of oil and gas companies. It isn’t right that at a time of national crisis a few are benefiting while the rest are struggling. I wouldn’t go for half measures or embellished loan schemes: I would help people across the country.
But I also believe it’s no good just fixing short-term problems. We’ve got to get bills down for good. For families, and for businesses. That means investing in cleaner, cheaper, British energy so we aren’t reliant on imports. The fact that our gas storage was sold off under Liz Truss’ watch at the Treasury is emblematic of a penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to the economy that leaves us all worse off. The biggest single thing we have to do to get out of the high price, low wage cycle we are stuck in is to grow the economy. To do that, we need to start thinking longer term, invest in British business, making the most of our opportunities, rather than simply lurching from one crisis to another.
Fixing the economy should be our first concern – but fixing the health service has to be next. Alarm bells should be ringing at how horror stories of stroke patients stuck in ambulance and heart attack victims forced to drive to A&E are becoming everyday occurrences. I’ve heard the leadership contenders promise “radical reforms” and “war footings”.
But the pensioners I met in Dewsbury who fear getting out of bed because they can’t afford to put the heating on don’t need more warm words: they need warm homes and a functioning NHS. Without proper action on both, our parents and grandparents Britain’s war generation, are facing disaster this winter. In government, Labour would ensure they didn’t have to worry. In opposition, my promise to them is that we will fight their corner.
The third issue on my week one to-do list would be getting a grip on the crime that is plaguing our communities. As a former Director of Public Prosecutions, this is a matter close to my heart. This week we heard the harrowing story of a girl who was raped when she was 13 and has been waiting two years just to have her case heard. The sense that our streets aren’t safe anymore is making people fearful. We need to change our approach to law and order: putting victims at the heart of justice, bringing back community policing and taking a preventative approach. Again: common sense, practical plans that will turn things around.
The crisis facing Britain feels different because, this time, we are truly all in it together. It is a crisis of the energy we all need; the health service we all depend upon; the neighbourhoods we all share. The incoming prime minister has to get to grips with them or we will all lose out. A crisis that impacts us all requires plans on the scale I have set out. This is not the time to worry about oil and gas profits – it’s time to get behind working people. It is not the time for sticking plasters for the NHS – it’s time to fix it. It is not the time for more of the same, failed ideas that got us in this mess – it’s time for a fresh start for Britain. If I were going into Downing Street this week, that’s exactly what the whole country could look forward to.
I think this crisis is going to last many years. And there alot more to the crisis than energy crisis because we have aging workforce and failded to prepare for it.
I think it’s common sense for the Government to manage the water supply, not private companies who pay bosses ridiculous amounts to dump waste in rivers and leave leaks unfixed. But for Starmer, that’s ideological purity.
but don’t you dare ask for a pay raise.
*”I favour common-sense, practical solutions over ideological purity…”*
Then stop the sanctions.
Crisis hasn’t even started yet, we will wistfully look back at the time of crazy energy forecasts and long for it, in the same way we once thought it couldn’t get worse than Theresa May
Why is the Telegraph bothering to print this? *They’re part of the problem!*
I feel that these op-eds should have the Author’s name in the title.
The Guardian puts the names in but the Telegraph doesn’t.
I think these are different stories when Nigel Farage is the one saying the Tories deserve to be wiped out, or Starmer is spreading message like this. Otherwise we assume that it’s coming from one of the Telegraph’s regular rag-tag columnists, and that’s a different message.
Labour are a shower of shit and have been for years. Not holding the current government to account is on them. This fraud is no better.
Nice to see Starmer speaking directly to the most vulnerable demographic: Telegraph subscribers.
>I came to politics after a long career. That makes me impatient. It also means I favour common-sense, practical solutions over ideological purity.
Swing voters will like this. Online Corbynistas certainly won’t.
This is the first truly inspirational thing I’ve heard from Labour in a long time, and of course it’s behind a fucking paywall.
If you have teachers, nurses and police officers using food banks then what does that say about how well work pays? People consider those respectable jobs and yet those doing them cannot afford a decent standard of living in many parts of the UK, especially the south. Now imagine how those doing less glamorous but equally important jobs are doing on less pay. Work no longer pays for too many people, that is not a failure of workers, it is a failure of the system.
I fucking hate that the torygraph, the times etc are now trying to appeal to everyone because for the last 10+ years they’ve been pushing the Tory agenda and propaganda, they still push anti- trans and other culture war shit.
Whatever is concerning the Torygraph it isn’t ‘working people ‘.
I want to reply to OPs comment but it’s locked.
Keir has said a lot here but with no actual examples of how he’s going to do it!
Oh look, the broken clock strikes right for the first time in years
People are now very confused n bewildered n are more than likely to vote Conservative.
18 comments
**It’s time to get behind working people and fix this national crisis**
A Labour government would bring bills down, provide a functioning NHS and get a grip on the crime plaguing our communities
KEIR STARMER
3 September 2022 • 8:34pm
The appointment of a fourth Tory prime minister in 12 years is no new dawn for Britain. As summer turns to autumn, the shadows of crisis are lengthening, looming over the whole country. There is no sign that either Rishi Sunak or Liz Truss have grasped the scale of what is facing us, let alone possesses the answers to it.
The crisis we face is not just of the sacred – people having to cut back on luxuries or forego extravagance – but of the profane. For the first time in living memory, simply heating your home, going to the shops or filling up the car are sources of anxiety for millions of people. The centre is not holding. Things, it feels, are falling apart.
I came to politics after a long career. That makes me impatient. It also means I favour common-sense, practical solutions over ideological purity. If I were stepping into Downing Street this week, I’d ensure no one would pay a penny more for their energy bill this winter. I would fund that with a windfall tax on the unexpected, record profits of oil and gas companies. It isn’t right that at a time of national crisis a few are benefiting while the rest are struggling. I wouldn’t go for half measures or embellished loan schemes: I would help people across the country.
But I also believe it’s no good just fixing short-term problems. We’ve got to get bills down for good. For families, and for businesses. That means investing in cleaner, cheaper, British energy so we aren’t reliant on imports. The fact that our gas storage was sold off under Liz Truss’ watch at the Treasury is emblematic of a penny-wise, pound-foolish approach to the economy that leaves us all worse off. The biggest single thing we have to do to get out of the high price, low wage cycle we are stuck in is to grow the economy. To do that, we need to start thinking longer term, invest in British business, making the most of our opportunities, rather than simply lurching from one crisis to another.
Fixing the economy should be our first concern – but fixing the health service has to be next. Alarm bells should be ringing at how horror stories of stroke patients stuck in ambulance and heart attack victims forced to drive to A&E are becoming everyday occurrences. I’ve heard the leadership contenders promise “radical reforms” and “war footings”.
But the pensioners I met in Dewsbury who fear getting out of bed because they can’t afford to put the heating on don’t need more warm words: they need warm homes and a functioning NHS. Without proper action on both, our parents and grandparents Britain’s war generation, are facing disaster this winter. In government, Labour would ensure they didn’t have to worry. In opposition, my promise to them is that we will fight their corner.
The third issue on my week one to-do list would be getting a grip on the crime that is plaguing our communities. As a former Director of Public Prosecutions, this is a matter close to my heart. This week we heard the harrowing story of a girl who was raped when she was 13 and has been waiting two years just to have her case heard. The sense that our streets aren’t safe anymore is making people fearful. We need to change our approach to law and order: putting victims at the heart of justice, bringing back community policing and taking a preventative approach. Again: common sense, practical plans that will turn things around.
The crisis facing Britain feels different because, this time, we are truly all in it together. It is a crisis of the energy we all need; the health service we all depend upon; the neighbourhoods we all share. The incoming prime minister has to get to grips with them or we will all lose out. A crisis that impacts us all requires plans on the scale I have set out. This is not the time to worry about oil and gas profits – it’s time to get behind working people. It is not the time for sticking plasters for the NHS – it’s time to fix it. It is not the time for more of the same, failed ideas that got us in this mess – it’s time for a fresh start for Britain. If I were going into Downing Street this week, that’s exactly what the whole country could look forward to.
I think this crisis is going to last many years. And there alot more to the crisis than energy crisis because we have aging workforce and failded to prepare for it.
I think it’s common sense for the Government to manage the water supply, not private companies who pay bosses ridiculous amounts to dump waste in rivers and leave leaks unfixed. But for Starmer, that’s ideological purity.
but don’t you dare ask for a pay raise.
*”I favour common-sense, practical solutions over ideological purity…”*
Then stop the sanctions.
Crisis hasn’t even started yet, we will wistfully look back at the time of crazy energy forecasts and long for it, in the same way we once thought it couldn’t get worse than Theresa May
Why is the Telegraph bothering to print this? *They’re part of the problem!*
I feel that these op-eds should have the Author’s name in the title.
The Guardian puts the names in but the Telegraph doesn’t.
I think these are different stories when Nigel Farage is the one saying the Tories deserve to be wiped out, or Starmer is spreading message like this. Otherwise we assume that it’s coming from one of the Telegraph’s regular rag-tag columnists, and that’s a different message.
Labour are a shower of shit and have been for years. Not holding the current government to account is on them. This fraud is no better.
Nice to see Starmer speaking directly to the most vulnerable demographic: Telegraph subscribers.
>I came to politics after a long career. That makes me impatient. It also means I favour common-sense, practical solutions over ideological purity.
Swing voters will like this. Online Corbynistas certainly won’t.
This is the first truly inspirational thing I’ve heard from Labour in a long time, and of course it’s behind a fucking paywall.
If you have teachers, nurses and police officers using food banks then what does that say about how well work pays? People consider those respectable jobs and yet those doing them cannot afford a decent standard of living in many parts of the UK, especially the south. Now imagine how those doing less glamorous but equally important jobs are doing on less pay. Work no longer pays for too many people, that is not a failure of workers, it is a failure of the system.
I fucking hate that the torygraph, the times etc are now trying to appeal to everyone because for the last 10+ years they’ve been pushing the Tory agenda and propaganda, they still push anti- trans and other culture war shit.
Whatever is concerning the Torygraph it isn’t ‘working people ‘.
I want to reply to OPs comment but it’s locked.
Keir has said a lot here but with no actual examples of how he’s going to do it!
Oh look, the broken clock strikes right for the first time in years
People are now very confused n bewildered n are more than likely to vote Conservative.