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It's just a few weeks since the Prime Minister asked me to join the Labour Cabinet as Party Chair. I have three priorities: delivering Labour's manifesto, building the Labour Movement, and winning a fourth term for Labour. I am confident that we can achieve all three.
I know that this is a tough time to be a Labour supporter. After nearly a decade in office, no government can expect an easy ride. It is clear that sections of the media have fallen for David Cameron. Some of the polls show the Tories ahead. We were all disappointed by the local election results last May. So why am I so confident?
On the manifesto, we have a solid Labour majority of over 60 seats. We would have given anything for a majority over 60 in the 1980s or in 1992. Our current majority is one of the biggest for any party since the war. The blunt truth is that our huge landslides in 1997 and 2001 were aberrations. Most governments get on with the job with much smaller majorities than we enjoyed between 1997 and 2005. So we can deliver our manifesto promises, and in particular those parts of the manifesto which started life as the Warwick Agreement.
We've made a good start: we've kept full employment at the heart of our economic strategy. We've prioritised public services, with extra billions for schools and hospitals, including significant pay increases for public sector workers. We've continued our crusade against poverty, at home and abroad, with a pledge to end child poverty, provide more childcare, end pensioner poverty, and increase our aid for the poorest nations. We've announced that we are restoring the link between pensions and earnings, removed by Thatcher, and re-introduced by Blair and Brown.
I was a union branch secretary, representing over 7,000 workers in local government, for four years. I know that being a trade unionist can be hard graft, sometimes with little reward or thanks. But if you look at what this Labour Government has achieved in partnership with the unions, from the national minimum wage, to workplace rights to join a union, to the right to take time off for maternity or paternity, then you can see that trade unionism has never been more worthwhile or more necessary. I want more trade unionists to join the Labour Party, and to help us to build our movement. And that brings me to the third of my priorities: winning a fourth term.
Just look at what Cameron's Conservatives would do if they won. They've pledged to cut public services and break the link between the unions and the Labour Party. They would bring back all those right-wingers (Hague, Gummer, Duncan Smith, and Redwood) who we thought we'd seen the back of. They must not succeed.
I want to work with all of you in the affiliated Trade Union movement, and to be proud of what you've achieved and ambitious for what we can continue to achieve together in the years ahead.
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