Britain’s greatest days remain ahead of it, Crawley Observer Column, Wednesday 4th September 2024

Britain’s greatest days remain ahead of it. I have seen commentators complaining of negativity in some of the Labour government’s messaging since the election. After years of pain, I understand why people are desperately seeking reasons to be hopeful, those reasons do exist, but getting there begins with government being prepared to level with people.

Before the election we knew things were bad. Public finances were bad with almost three times the level of debt compared to when the Conservatives took office, wherever you looked public services were on the brink of collapse, and households desperately struggling to keep their heads above water.

Despite how bad things appeared to be, in reality it turns out things are even worse. Perhaps this shouldn’t surprise us, heading into a tough election the Conservatives were unlikely to admit to how bad things were and there were the inevitable pre-election bribes despite the UK lacking the money to pay for them.

From completely full prisons to a hospice sector going bankrupt, the general experience in Parliament since the election has been finding out that everything is currently on fire and having to run around like crazy with an extinguisher.

We are just two months into a five year term in office and major progress is already being made to stabilise all of these crises. This is important, it is going to provide us with the solid base we need to attract the private investment the UK needs to end over a decade of lost economic growth. It is only with that growth that we can resolve the cost of living pressures affecting families across the country and generate the tax revenue we need to restore public services back up to an acceptable level.

We are already starting to see signs of the first green shoots of economic recovery and tough decisions taken by the Labour Party are beginning to resolve 14 years of public service mismanagement. We are being honest that improvements won’t be happening overnight, but Labour are the party of hope and we are working to deliver that better future Britain deserves.