Friday in my constituency summed up for me the state of our country. Local headteachers I respect and admire were in tears as they described the challenges they are grappling with. The owner of a popular local chippy showed me his energy bill, up from £5,000 a quarter to £11,000, as he shared his fears for his business. A parent showed me a photo of his straight-A son beaten black and blue in the middle of his GCSEs and shared his frustration that he has put more work into the investigation than the police. People are increasingly looking to Labour to get Britain out of this mess. Last week Keir Starmer set out the fifth of Labour’s five missions for government: to smash the class ceiling that holds back kids from working-class backgrounds like mine. Taken together with our ambition to build an NHS fit for the future out of the ashes of the worst crisis in its history, to make our streets safe, to deliver clean power by 2030 and to get our economy racing ahead of the world, with the benefits shared so that we’re all better off, Keir’s missions amount to an ambitious vision of what our country can look like in the 2030s. Labour faces two big hurdles – both largely of the Conservatives’ making, both of which will make our job more difficult.
The first is the car crash of the public finances. The Conservatives’ ideological joyride of a budget last year has left everyone paying the price through higher rents, higher mortgages and higher bills. Keir and Rachel Reeves face tougher choices than Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in 1997. As Keir said in his conference speech in September, this means there will be good Labour things we want to do but won’t be able to promise. We face a huge deficit of trust in politics too. It’s a far bigger problem for us than it is for the Tories. As Britain’s progressive party, Labour is where people turn when they believe things can get better. When cynicism wins, so do the Tories. It falls to us to win public confidence in the Labour party and in the ability of politics to be a force for good. That’s why we are being so careful to only make promises we know we can keep. The only thing worse than no hope is false hope. It will disappoint some of our friends that we are not pledging support for every cause they believe in. But it would be so much more damaging to make promises now and then break them after the election. Ask the Lib Dems what far-fetched promises on tuition fees did for them.
As shadow health secretary I have a challenging public service brief. It is not always easy being unable to pull the spending lever. But that is exactly why Keir and Rachel are right to prioritise economic growth, because that’s the only way we are going to be able to give the NHS and other public services the investment they need. Imagine Britain leading the G7 with the highest sustained economic growth, with a million more jobs in green energy, with an NHS fit for the future, safe streets and a trusted justice system, and with every child, whatever their background, having the best start in life. That will be Labour’s platform at the next general election, and because we are making the hard choices necessary for government, it will be a platform you can trust us to deliver. • Wes Streeting is shadow health secretary and MP for Ilford North