The following arrived in a brown envelope at Lib Dem Voice Towers, this morning. It is probably an early draft.
[Check against delivery]
Friends, this country will never turn our back on the world and on the principles of internationalism. Those values are reflected not just in this country but in this party, and in the great team of Manchester United.
Manchester has some special memories for me because it was here, 4 years ago, I finally got the better of my brother. Now we meet here in serious times not just for our world but for our country too – a country that nearly split up. So let’s thank all the Labour politicians who helped to save our country.
All of us have a responsibility to explain why 45% of Scotland wanted to break our country up. I spoke to a woman who hadn’t decided how to vote because her life was so hard and politicians weren’t listening. I found in this some validation for having talked endlessly about the cost of living ever since the economy picked up.
We can build a better future and this speech is about Labour’s plan.
A young woman called [woman] who works in a wine bar pub near where I live thinks politics is rubbish.
On the other hand, there were two more young women in the park who seemed excited to see me.
Laughs
Turns out they were hoping for Benedict Cumberbatch. [I have to have a slightly odd-looking celebrity here, right? Oh yes.]
Our task is to restore people’s faith in the Labour Party. For all the sound and fury, what people are saying is that the Labour Party doesn’t care about me. No wonder people have lost faith in our party.
Can we build a different future? Together we can. [“Yes we can” is taken, right?]
The amazing thing about Gareth’s software company was that lots of people were working together. This is a really great idea.
Earlier this year I was getting in the way in a hospital in Watford. The nurses were all working together too. I was incredibly moved and so proud, that they should embrace Labour’s new big idea like this.
Go to any school. The teachers all work together (except in the classroom – we’ll have to do something about that)
The armed forces. Fighting together. As if they were all on the same side. Labour’s values in action.
Friends it is time we ran the country together. No, I mean it is time I ran the country. We can make this happen together. Phew.
Can the Tories be the answer?
Confused murmering
I said can the Tories be the answer???
No!!!
Right. The Tories would break up Gareth’s software company and make everybody work on their own.
Now look, we know the kind of election campaign there will be. Over the next 8 months David Cameron will want to talk a lot about the past. He’s done a great job and all that.
But the record of this government is one of the worst ever since the last one.
The longest fall in living standards, since wheneveritwas, starting in 2005 [leave that out].
[Can I mention the growth rate, or unemployment? No. Ed]
Today I want to lay out 6 national goals for our Great Ten Year Plan. Why 10 years? Because for the first 5 years we’ll be dealing with a massive inherited deficit, and you shouldn’t, er, judge a government given that kind of start. Er.
Let me talk about the normal people I met a little more before I start.
1. Let’s reward hard work again, by supporting the evil coalition’s Universal Credit. Or by raising the minimum wage above (or possibly below) the rate recommended by the Low Pay Commission as not a risk to employment.
2. Wages should grow as quickly as the economy does. Growth today is translating into falling unemployment rather than rising wages, but we can put a stop to that.
Transfer power out of Whitehall to the towns and cities of the country, so that new combined authorities can create jobs wealth and prosperity. [Is this really a good fit in the wages section? Well you can’t have 7 points. Focus group says 7 is too many.]
5 million people in our country are self-employed, often the most entrepreneurial, are often insecure but find it hard to get credit or start a pension. We will end this modern discrimination by giving the self-employed equal rights to sue their, er, employers.
3. To become a world leader in the Green economy creating a million jobs by supporting the evil Liberal Democrat Green Investment Bank.
The environment matters – there is no more important issue for me than tackling global climate change, so I thought I had better give it a quick mention here in the middle.
4. Elizabeth here is one of this government’s record number of apprentices. She is one of the lucky few (or lucky many under the coalition). I’m going to denigrate the quality of her work. And we want more of that.
But the massive rise in apprenticeships we have seen has come without any element of compulsion, and we can do better than that. Together.
5. We need to be building as many homes as we, er, need. By 2025 in case nothing happens before 2020.
6. I will always remember my conversation with [normal person]. It was something about the NHS.
So it is time to talk about the NHS. More doctors and nurses. Hooray. And we can do that without taxing ordinary people any more. We will tackle tax avoidance, introduce an evil Liberal Democrat mansion tax and levy a windfall tax on tobacco companies. That way the less popular taxes that we raise to spend on less popular things will go unnoticed. Take that, tough choices!
We will set £2.5bn for our “time to care” fund, aside from the rest of NHS funding which is focussed on clinical priorities and lacks a sanctimonious label.
[Should I say something again about integrating health and social care? No – turns out it’s underway and we didn’t notice.]
We want people to think the NHS is sliding backwards under this government. But we will learn from the unreformed Welsh NHS. Together.
We need to change the way politics works, and what does that mean? It means supporting the evil Liberal Democrat policy of votes at 16. It means supporting the evil Liberal Democrat policy of Lords reform that we only just blocked. And to devolve powers to local government building on the evil coalition city deals and growth deals.
And we need a constitutional convention in the hope of kicking English Votes on English Laws into the long grass.
And let’s hear it for Carwyn Jones. Love what you’ve done with the NHS in Wales.
Britishness. Welshness. Englishness. Scottishness. Northernness Irishness. Britishness again.
I care about the principle of together. [Ordinary person] said what we need is somebody who will stand up for everyday working people – because you will have the power and will never devolve it. So that’s why I jumped on the phone hacking bandwagon. That’s why I talk about bonuses. That’s why I talk about payday lenders. That’s why I stood up to the Daily Mail when it attacked my dad. Because if a Marxist academic is not an everyday working person with no voice, then who is?
Cameron claimed to be compassionate before the election, but afterwards he extended the bedroom tax that we had applied to the private sector, to social housing too.
We can’t build the country we need without you. I say to you: young people, old people, business people and public sector workers – we need you more than we need the rest of them.
Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together. Together.
Labour’s plan for Britain’s future. Don’t try doing it without me.
Early drafts of Ed’s previous conference speeches can be found here and here.
* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.
13 Comments
Genius!
It’s academic.
I thought the real speech was quit good, ok it ignored immigration, the deficit, went on to long and had too many ‘I met a real person’ stories but it was surely his best so far. He does say repeatedly say “and here’s the thing” before digressing to something that is not the thing.
Really enjoyed that – thanks
Loved the sequence of Togethers, probably not as many as in the real thing. I love the fact that he apparently forgot the section about The Defecit, to Labour its literally invisible , unthinkable & unsayable.
1. Let’s reward hard work again, by supporting the evil coalition’s Universal Credit. Or by raising the minimum wage above (or possibly below) the rate recommended by the Low Pay Commission as not a risk to employment.
That would be the legislation your party voted for and continue to defend, even in the face of the horrifying results it has caused.
4. Elizabeth here is one of this government’s record number of apprentices. She is one of the lucky few (or lucky many under the coalition). I’m going to denigrate the quality of her work. And we want more of that.
Shelf stacking isn’t an apprenticeship, except when it means that you can get money out of the government for calling it that. Apprenticeships should teach a vocation, not be a tool for big business to get cheap labour.
5. We need to be building as many homes as we, er, need. By 2025 in case nothing happens before 2020.
Anything’s better than the current, lowest ever, rate of housebuilding. Overseen by the Coalition.
Ah, the Welsh NHS, that would be the one that has suffered a disproportionate amount of cuts (compared to the rest of the country), but still has record satisfaction amongst its patients. https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/julian-tudorhart/dont-believe-camerons-hype-welsh-nhs-has-much-to-teach-english
I guess it is pointless to try and point out to LDV that the NHS really is collapsing. In my part of the country essential community services to some of the most vulnerable people are just stopping.
People are going to die (and indeed will already have done so) because of what your government has done.
But no carry on with your witty self congratulation on the NHS.
Technical Ephemra:
Remember when the LibDems used be the caring party who we all trusted to do the right thing. Now they just mock people who want to do what’s right – all very sad.
Joe Otten
I think you would have served the readers of LDV better with a real analysis of what Mliband really said rather than jour attempt at satire.
Liberal Democrats need to get out of the habit of fighting the 2010 election or even the 2005 election.
Labour have not been in power for the last four and a half years.
Mliband is listing in many cases policies with which Liberal Democrats agree (even Nick Legg’s wishy-wshy Centre Party Liberal Democrats !!!).
In other cases, like the mansion tax, Miliband is lifting Lineral Democrat policy.
Miliband’s straight and unequivocal commitment to stay in the EU ought to be music to our ears, even Nick Clegg’s ears.
So are we really going to sleep-walk into the general election ignoring these facts and pretending that the Tories are OK despite their fundamental differences from us on Europe, devolution, climate change, the bedroom tax, the mansion tax, privatisation of the the NHS, Trident etc etc ??
Technical, after hearing for about 30 years that the NHS is on the brink of collapse, the charge has worn a bit thin. Doesn’t the NHS deserve a soberer debate than this? I had my doubts about the Health and Social care Act – I feared its opponents might have a point – but it turned out to be more of the same conservatism. (The same instincts that in the US raise fears about any movement towards universal healthcare)
Find another £2.5bn for it? Excellent. Forget the bit about the deficit – in the hope that everybody forgets that in order to spend an extra £2.5bn, you need to find £77.5bn – because the first £75bn you find goes into the black hole.
Should I mock people who are trying to do the right thing? Maybe. I haven’t really considered doing that. Should I mock Ed Miliband? If not, why does he make it so easy? He’s meant to be an intellectual, so where is the intellectual substance? He represents completely different values, so where are the completely different policies? He wants to be the answer to disaffection with politics, so how did Gordon Brown of all people put him to shame on that score?
According to the left, the NHS died a few years ago with the Health and Social Care Act. I suspect that most people failed to notice. For all the unjustified bluster aimed at us over the NHS if you want to see how Labour cares so much for it, take a trip to Wales or to mid-Staffordshire.
You could argue the NHS died in 1999 with devolution, to be replaced with 3 separate NHSs. The English Democrats are very cross about English NHS reforms passed in the 00s by Scottish Labour MPs, as if they were trying to make the English NHS worse than the Scottish one.
This too. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/11117924/Sketch-A-young-man-called-Ed.html