Tuesday, October 02, 2012

That Ed Milliband Speech in full (3)

[check against delivery]

Hello and welcome to Manchester.

I'm not very sure what to talk about today. I've been leader for two years, and I'm feeling so old my memory is going.

My son tells me I should be talking about dinosaurs, and that seems as good an idea as any.

Anyway instead of making a speech today I'm going to do what my image advisors keep telling me to do and tell you my story.

I was born in a hospital and went to a school. Just like you normal people.

I wouldn't be standing here today without an education from one of the most exclusive comprehensive schools in the country.

My parents instilled in me a sense of duty to get on with my brother. [shrugs]

I believe we shall overcome, nuns in a convent, over the alps to Switzerland. This is my faith.

Of course my parents didn't tell me what career to go into. And they are both so scarily left-wing, they must be ashamed of me. Or maybe I show them a different face to what I show you.

That is my faith. Those are my two faithes.

When I think of normal person I met I think how full of positive empathic energy she was. And then she told me her story. It was a better story than this one.

When I think of small business person I met I feel so touchy-feely, I'm in danger of touching myself here on stage.

Why is it that the gas and electricity bill just goes up and up? [Should I mention my time as Energy Secretary?  Ed. No, you fool]

Hooray for the olympics and paralympics. We succeeded because of the 70,000 games makers all of whom are here with us today. [We'll need a bigger hall. Ed]

Hooray for the troops. Hooray for the police. Hooray for Seb Coe and Tessa Jowell.

And Hooray for us. [What about all the elite athletes - do we mention them? Ed]

That sense of a country united. I can't remember a time like it since the country rejected Michael Foot.

Bejamin Disraeli - Clement Atlee - One Nation [Tory? Ed] - that is my vision, that is the Britain we must become.

But Labour's failures on youth unemployment, the increasing gap between rich and poor, and a welfare system that fails to make work pay, has stood in the way of these things. [Er, I'm a bit worried people will notice I am praising coalition policy. Ed]

So who can do this? What about the Tories. [murmur of agreement from the crowd] Wrong answer. What about the Tories [boos from the crowd]

Borrowing borrowing borrowing borrowing. We are against the government doing this. We want them to do more of it and/or less of it. But the opposite is true.

The problem is the British people are paying the price of the last governments failure. [This government surely? Ed. Sorry.]

What do they choose as their priority at this time? A tax cut for milliionaires like me, balanced by caps on reliefs that will raise five times as much from millionaires like me. [better not mention the last bit]

How can we justify the unfairness in 2012 of ignoring the whole balance of the tax package when criticising it? We have to do it or we will have nothing to say in this speech. I mean story.

Remember the people's budget of 1909 that was blocked by the House of Lords? We have sunk Lords reform so that it would be blocked again.

My advisors tell me to attack on the issue of competence because we are rightly seen as weak there.

Ooohh silly Tory toffs look tee hee. You wont find that kind of privilege among Islington and Hampstead millionaires like myself.

So we disagree and agree with the government on welfare reform.

And we agree with many of the government cuts, and we agree that those with the broadest shoulders will bear the greatest burden. I will never support a top rate as low as 45p, that's just wrong. That's why our party had it at 40p. One nation can be two-faced nation.

There is no future for this party as a party of one sectional interest, led by a man bought and paid for by the unions.

In One Nation, no interest from Murdoch to the banks will be too powerful to be held to account. [So why didn't we set up Leveson and Vickers? Ed]

Think about small business person who was ripped of by his bank thanks to our failure to regulate. We will do something about this if it hasn't been done already.

To be a One Nation economy, you see, you have to support coalition policies in all these areas. Let's pretend there aren't a million extra apprenticeships under the coalition and talk as if we've just thought of the idea.

So we'll now focus on the forgotten 50% who don't go to university - by making them pay higher taxes to support the tuition of those who do go.

We will make apprenticeships a condition of public contracts. And I'll talk for a bit about coalition policy on apprenticeships as if it were ours. But focusing on the public sector.

Michael Gove. Tee hee. He wanted to bring back a two tier system, but the Liberal Democrats wouldn't have it.

We can bring about this one nation economy by removing clarity from accounting standards, and by putting up barriers to trade. Because that's never gone wrong, no sir.

I want us to engage with Europe and the rest of the world. Too often in the past we have been tolerant of immigration where it might benefit our economy and society. So this is something I will do differently. The last Labour government did too little to win the "bigot" vote.

Scotland could leave the United Kingdom, but we would be much worse off as a result. Not just in pounds and pence but also in the electoral prospects of the Labour Party.

Hooray for the NHS. I'm so pleased it still exists despite everything we said about the reforms.

What a scoundrel Cameron is. The Labour Party would never do a top-down reorganisation of the NHS.

So I'm going to pretend for a bit that the NHS has been abolished, because that will get you fired up.

The worst thing for me about these reforms is how they were designed around Blairite values. It proves the old adage: You just can't trust New Labour on the NHS.

So let me be unclear. The next Labour government will repeal something.

So that's my speech, I mean story.

I was talking to my mum. Not about dinosaurs this time.

Who in this generation will fight them on the beaches, and on the landing grounds? It's not some impossible dream. One nation under labour can fight these [other] dinosaurs. Thankyou very much.