I have a simple belief about how this country should be run. Ministers should wake up every day and think: “How can we make things better for working people?”
It’s the least the British people should expect from their government - the bare minimum. But it’s not what we have at the moment.
Just look at what Boris Johnson and his chums have been up to: refurbishing his flat and trying to cover up how it was paid for; scrambling to get their fellow Tory MP Owen Paterson off the hook when he broke the rule; writing laws they expect everyone else to follow and then breaking them over and over again - a constant drip-drip of sleaze and scandal.
One rule for them, another for the rest of us.
I’ll say nothing of some of the twisted behaviour of recent weeks - except to say at least one Tory MP has done the decent thing and resigned.
Their failure to get on with their jobs would be shameful at any time. But during a once in a lifetime cost-of-living crisis, it’s a disgrace.
Working people are paying the price for this Government. Household bills are through the roof. Prices at the checkouts and the petrol pumps are barely believable. Wages aren’t increasing to make up for it.
Incredibly, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have chosen this moment to pick the pockets of working people with their damaging National Insurance rise.
It’s the fifteenth tax rise since they took office; high-tax Tories, squeezing you to the pips.
Labour would do things very differently. For months, we’ve been calling on the Government to give people a break.
This week, BP announced their latest blockbuster profits - £5billion for the first three months of this year, all down to rising oil and gas prices.
At the same time, pensioners are struggling to heat their homes and pay their bills; that’s not right.
It’s why we’d have a one-off tax on the oil and gas giants’ unexpected profits. Every fair-minded person can see that it’s the right solution - even the oil bosses themselves seem relaxed about it.
But Boris Johnson has his head buried in the sand. He’s had months to see sense and change course. But he hasn’t.
Ever since he was found to have repeatedly broken the lockdown rules he forced the country to follow, he’s had only one aim: to save his own job.
The Tories have spent this election campaign coming up with absurd distractions and deflections - attacking our brilliant deputy leader Angela Rayner simply because she’s a working class woman; throwing smears at me for days and days on end – for having a takeaway and a beer while I was working late at night.
Angela and I take it as a compliment when they attack us. It’s because they know they’ve got nothing else left.
But the British public shouldn’t have to put up with a government that refuses to take seriously the very real issues facing you and your family: soaring crime and anti-social behaviour that plagues communities across the country; GP waiting times that are getting longer and longer - and, yes, the cost-of-living crisis.
I make no apology for banging on about these things; they are what matter.
If, like me, you believe Britain deserves so much better than this out-of-touch, out-of-ideas Tory Government, that they need to buck their ideas up or get out, then today vote for a party that’s on your side.
A party with a proper plan to get household bills down and Britain back up off the mat. Vote Labour.
