Ed Miliband’s Fabian Conference speech – full text

Ed Miliband gave the keynote speech at the Fabian New Year Conference this morning, here’s the full text of the speech:

It is great to be back at the Fabians.

And there is no better time to be here, than at the start of the year of the general election.

And I want today to spell out to you our argument in this election.

Let me tell you what I am fighting for and what I believe in.

I believe in a fairer, more just and more equal Britain.

I believe the work of all working people, not just those who get the big bonuses, should be properly rewarded.

I believe every child should have the best start in life and be able to afford to get an apprenticeship or go to university.

I believe that every powerful interest, from the banks to the energy companies, should be accountable to our country.

I believe our vital public services, including our National Health Service, are the pride of our country and must be there for us all when we need them.

And I believe we succeed as a society when we move together, not drift apart.

These are my basic beliefs.

All underpinned by one idea:

It is only when working people succeed, that Britain succeeds too.

And because of these beliefs, I believe this is the most important election for a generation.

Because it is the biggest choice for a generation.

About who we are.

About how we live together.

About how we succeed as a country.

That’s why it is more important than ever that we do what we know we can: go out and win this general election.

State of the Nation

Let’s start with where the country is now.

We all know the reality.

For the first time since the 1920s, working people will be worse off at the end of a government than they were at the start.

We all know the reality.

Young people face a harder life than their parents.

University tuition fees have trebled and apprenticeships for young people are falling.

We all know the reality.

Rents and the cost of a home put the dream of home ownership beyond the reach of millions.

We all know the reality.

Zero hours contracts have exploded, driving down wages and allowing some firms to play havoc with people’s lives.

We all know the reality.

We’re a country of food banks and bank bonuses.

A country where social mobility is going backwards and privilege is rewarded.

A country where millionaires get tax cuts and millions pay more.

And we are a country where they have failed on the deficit.

Because they have failed to tackle the cost of living crisis, because wages have been pushed down for ordinary families, because the revenues haven’t come in, they haven’t balance the books.

Week after week, month after month, year after year, this government has shown a tin ear for what is really going on.

They have denied the cost of living crisis.

They have been woefully out of touch with the daily struggles of families.

They have rubbished the idea that people are worse off.

They have pretended that their “give with one hand, take more with another” tax changes have made people better off.

Even this week George Osborne was saying we were set under him to be “the richest country in the world.”

And that his economic victory is complete.

Now, after all this denial and complacency, it is so clear that the Tories think this is as good as it gets.

And then we wake up this morning and we now hear the Prime Minister thinks ‘Britain needs a pay rise’.

I think that sound we are hearing is people across the country choking on their cornflakes.

This is someone who has spent months and years telling us there was no cost of living crisis, and then if there ever was one, it had been fixed.

You couldn’t make it up.

Five years of denial, complacency and failure on living standards, and less than four months before an election, he claims to have woken up to the problem.

Who is he trying to kid?

You can’t wipe out five years of failure on living standards with pre-election pleading.

You can’t magic away people being £1600 a year worse off by trying to take credit for falling oil prices

You can’t obscure your decisions to cut taxes for a few millionaires, with warm words about everyone else.

You can’t change who you are: a party and a government for a few at the top that has betrayed the working people of Britain.

I say to the British people: you don’t need to look in the crystal ball to see what the next five years of a Tory government would be like.

You just need to look at their record.

Failure on living standards, failure on the economy, failure on the deficit.

You and your family worse off.

You can’t build an economy that really works for working people unless we have a Labour government.

And why has David Cameron suddenly claimed to understand the problems of the country?

Is it because he really means it or because he knows he has failed?

Of course, it is because he knows he can’t defend his record.

That’s one of the reasons he is running from debates.

He is neither proud of his record, nor confident about his plans for the future.

And his is a mission that will keep on failing the British people.

What is their plan for the next five years?

Well I have only heard one central manifesto idea from them.

To cut public spending as a share of national income back to the levels of the 1930s.

The Tory plan to shrink the state is far from complete.

In fact, they are not even half way through the cuts they would make.

And what would it mean?

An end to all central government funding for local government and the destruction of local services, from meals on wheels to children’s centres.

Our NHS undermined by cuts to social care and the reality that no national health service can succeed with the levels of overall spending that this government is proposing.

And this doesn’t just matter for our society, it matters for our economy too.

Because we can’t build a 21st century economy with 1930s levels of public spending.

Think about what the Tory plan would mean for the productive potential of our country.

Education, skills, opportunities for our young people: they would all be further undermined.

I tell you this:

The Tories will never tackle the cost of living crisis.

They will never build real and enduring prosperity for working people.

They will never balance the books with a plan to cut back to 1930s public spending.

Britain can do better than this

The Tories Can’t Answer the Challenges of the 21st Century

Of course, Britain isn’t the only country in the world to be faced with these challenges.

The problem of inequality, causing a cost of living crisis for families, is a problem right across the world.

From Australia to America, nations are grappling with it.

This is our generation’s greatest challenge.

And Britain should lead the way in showing how it can be solved.

The problem is that under David Cameron, we have a government who far from turning things round, is making things far worse.

Not by accident.

But because they are guided by totally the wrong beliefs about how a country succeeds in the 21st century.

Beliefs that have had their time.

Beliefs that should be consigned to history.

The belief that insecurity is the way you make working people work harder.

I believe that it is security and confidence that helps working people succeed, build strong families and a better life for their children.

The belief that low pay is the only way we can compete in the world.

Well, I believe something different.

I don’t believe we can compete with the sweatshops of the world on low pay nor that we should try.

I believe we should compete on high skills and high wages.

The belief that markets will always get the right outcome, even if that means powerful interests have all the power.

Well, I believe something different.

That no vested interest should be allowed to take the public for a ride.

The belief that we cannot afford decent public services when money is tight.

Well, I believe something different.

We can always make fairer choices, because we can’t afford not to have the public services we need, for our economy, our society or our future.

Above all, their belief that the success of the country depends just on a few at the top.

With the wealth trickling down magically to everyone else.

Well, I believe something different.

I believe that experiment has failed.

I believe the success of a country depends on the success of all working people.

The Tories’ governing mission is this:

Reduce government to its very core, cut services to the bone, give huge tax cuts to the very wealthiest and let powerful interests have things all their own way, and then sit back and hope the country will somehow succeed.

But it has failed.

Labour’s Plan

So Britain needs a new plan.

To address our economic problems.

A plan based on a fundamentally different idea.

The idea that if you put working people first, then Britain as a whole will do well, both now and in the future.

That’s what Labour offers in this general election.

Each day, each week, each month, the beating heart of the Labour government will be the fortunes of working people.

So we will balance the books and cut the deficit every year but not by shredding our public services.

Instead, we will make common sense reductions in spending, with departmental spending falling outside protected areas.

But we know that you can’t simply cut your way to deficit reduction.

So we will also make sure that everyone pays their fair share: we will repeal this government’s tax cut for millionaires and introduce a Mansion Tax, on houses above £2 million.

And most importantly of all we will cut the deficit with the different kind of economy we need for working people: higher skills, higher productivity, therefore higher revenues.

A race to the top, not a race to the bottom, in wages and conditions.

We will end the scandal of exploitative zero hours contracts.

We will raise the minimum wage to over £8 an hour.

And to create the country we believe in, to build that future, young people will be at the heart of our plan.

We judge the ethics of a country by whether it gives dignity to those in old age.

We judge the future of a country by the prospects for the young.

Now, I don’t think there has ever been a government that has so often made the young pay the price for hard times than this one.

We will have a new direction.

An education system that serves every child in our country: creative, inspiring.

And doing what our country has never done: valuing vocational and academic qualifications equally.

Every young person deserves a chance of a decent education after 18 and a career.

And we need to be doing the right thing by the next generation and the generation after that, by putting climate change at the centre of the agenda.

Not just for the environment, but in our plan for our economy and the jobsof the future.

To make this plan for working people work, we need every part of our society playing their part from top to bottom.

The powerful interests that had things their own way finally held to account.

Let’s have the fight about who will best stand up to the energy companies.

A Tory party that stands by as people are ripped off month after month, year after year.

Or a Labour plan that gives regulator the power to cut prices, with an energy price freeze until 2017 to ensure prices can only fall and cannot rise.

We will break up the big banks and get proper competition on the high street and create a British Investment bank, with regional banks in every single part of the country.

And those fair rules shouldn’t just apply to the powerful.

Everyone should play by them.

Including people who come to live and work in Britain from abroad.

Immigration makes us stronger, richer and more powerful as a nation.

But making immigration work for everyone and not just a few, means people should contribute before they claim and we should never, ever allow companies to undercut wages and conditions of workers here by paying slave wages to those brought in from overseas.

An open, tolerant Britain is the way we succeed in our economy and in our society.

An open, tolerant Britain inside not outside the European Union.

If you want to know what a real threat to prosperity looks like, think about a Conservative government sleepwalking to the exit door of the European Union.

Finally, our plan will transform our public services for the 21st century, even in tough times.

Including our National Health Service.

We’re a country where in the last two weeks, we’ve seen a treatment tent erected in a hospital car park, ambulances queuing up outside hospitals and a patient being treated in a store cupboard.

It is shameful.

David Cameron should be ashamed.

He has betrayed people’s trust on our NHS.

The British people will never trust him again.

And what you will see from Labour is plans for public health, for mental health and our ten year plan for the future of health and social care.

Not a plan for the NHS to stand still but a plan to improve the service for the future.

Because the only way to solve the A&E crisis inside our hospitals, is by improving services at home and in the community.

Access to GPs.

Care for the elderly.

A 21st century health and social care service.

And it is right not just to have Mansion Tax, but to raise new revenue from the tobacco companies and clampdown on tax avoidance by the hedge funds, for more midwives, care workers, doctors and nurses.

Because those with the broadest shoulders should bear the greatest burden and we need a NHS with time to care.

And it will be a NHS run on the right principles of care, compassion and cooperation, not competition, privatisation and fragmentation.

And that’s why we will repeal this government’s Health and Social Care Act.

The Choice Ahead

This is a plan that can change things for our country.

A plan that can make Britain a world leader in the campaign to tackle the greatest 21st century challenge of inequality and an economy that doesn’t work for everyday people.

It is a plan that can bring real, enduring prosperity to every part of Britain.

But it is not a plan that is going to happen automatically.

It will require a new way of doing things.

As well as tackling inequalities of income and wealth, we will tackle inequalities of power.

Because it is right thing to do.

And it is the only way to make our plan work.

All sources of power — private and public — should be accountable.

That means at local level, health, education and policing should be accountable to local people. And they will be.

And it means we take power and resources out of Whitehall, with a comprehensive, not a piecemeal, plan for city and county regions, over economic development, transport and skills.

A £30 billion devolution of spending to local people.

It is time to devolve power and reverse a century of centralisation.

And just as the only way to govern is by sharing power, so too the only way to win is with the power of our movement.

It is going to take a political campaign like no other to bring it about.

We’ve got a big task ahead us.

That task is going to be hard.

A task that those who currently have all the power will do anything to stop.

But remember this:

They are the pessimists at this election.

They are the pessimists saying this is as good as it gets for Britain.

We are the optimists.

Not offering false hope.

But a sense of optimism that we can do better.

Not a promise that it will all be transformed on day one.

But that we can change the direction of this country.

I know we can.

That is what good people round this country believe too.

We’ve got our chance now to change our country.

Let’s take it.

Let’s grab it

Let’s fight for the future of working people.

Let’s fight for the success of our country.

Let’s fight for the Britain we believe in: more equal, more fair, more just.