FOR too long, ordinary, hard-working people have felt that Britain doesn’t work for them.
I hear it everywhere I go.
People fed up with paying more but getting less.
Worried their kids and grandkids won’t have the same chances in life they did.
Tired of seeing the country held back.
I am utterly determined to turn this around.
And I am convinced we can do it.
When I became Labour leader three years ago, it was a party talking to itself, interested in narrow, niche subjects.
Not focused on the real concerns of families up and down the land.
Now we are proudly back as the party for working people.
I want to do the same for Britain — to make sure our country delivers for those who make it great.
We’ve all said to our kids at some point: “If you work hard, you can achieve what you want in life.”
It’s what all parents want.
But the truth is, as a country, we are in danger of breaking that promise.
Level the playing field
If we are to avoid that tragedy, we need to break down what I call the “class ceiling”.
Too often, where you are born or who your parents are matters more than your talent or graft.
The class ceiling is acting as a great logjam in the streams of potential and talent we have all across the country.
My job is to remove it, and in doing so level the playing field for all those who feel held back or blocked off in today’s Britain.
The examples of this are everywhere.
Young people unable to buy their own home.
Older people struggling to retrain for new jobs.
Working-class people being paid far less for doing the same job as those from better-off backgrounds.
These are the prices people pay for a Tory government that has put opportunities for some above opportunities for all.
But they are all fixable and I am determined to be the Prime Minister who fixes them.
My first duties, if elected, will be to ensure Britain has strong national defences and strong public finances.
They are non-negotiable: The rock-solid foundations from which we will build.
From those foundations, I have set out the building blocks for our country’s future: Missions for a better Britain.
Increasing living standards, bringing down waits in the NHS, making our streets safe, investing in our country’s future to bring down energy bills and create quality jobs.
Today I am setting out the fifth and final pillar of those missions: Breaking down the barriers to opportunity.
It is both our most important job and our most difficult.
It will mean taking on the blockers and the snobs, the naysayers and the defeatists.
‘The class ceiling is acting as a great logjam in the streams of potential and talent we have all across the country’ says Starmer[/caption]
It will mean changing Britain’s absurd and out-of-date planning laws so we can build everything from attractive homes to offshore wind farms.
It will mean making sure what is taught in our schools prepares young people for work and for life.
It will mean creating more gold- standard apprenticeships.
And it will mean getting every young person not just reading and writing fluently but having the speaking skills the elite expect their children to have.
By doing those things, we will give the restorative, electric jolt of opportunity, ambition and possibility to our flatlining country.
It is impossible to overstate how vital the optimism and hope that comes with opportunity is.
Similarly, we can all see how its absence is sapping our country of its vim and vigour.
This is personal to me.
There was nothing about my working-class upbringing that suggested I would end up as the country’s most senior prosecutor or the leader of the Labour Party.
My parents — Mum a nurse, Dad a toolmaker — instilled in me the belief that hard work and imagination would be rewarded in Britain.
That, even in tough times, things would get better.
As a country, we badly need to restore the sense that a better future lies ahead of us.
That starts with another crucial commodity: Respect.
For too long, people have seen their towns ignored.
Their views condemned.
Too few opportunities in too few places.
Too little reward for hard work.
Too much talent going wasted.
The pride and ambition that people have in their families, their communities and their country has simply not been matched by those in power.
This matters.
There is a race on for the jobs and industries of the future and it is only by drawing on all our talents, skills and strengths that we will win it.
It is only by respecting and valuing all four corners of our great country that we can once again be a world leader.
Things just get harder
But I also want to be straight with Sun readers.
I know the sacrifices working people make – and I respect them.
When the Government treats the economy like some mad roulette wheel, as this one has, it is they who suffer.
I will never do what the Tories have done and take risks with people’s jobs, mortgages or savings.
Economic stability must come first.
We will never spend what we can’t afford.
That will mean saying no to good things we would like to do, like reduce tuition fees for students.
Cutting the cost of living for working people and investing on our country’s future must come first.
For too long, working people in Britain have felt that the game is rigged against them.
That things just get harder and harder.
No longer.
I can’t promise to fix everything in our country overnight.
I can’t promise that it will all be easy or plain sailing.
But I can promise the next Labour government will be run in the interests of those who work hard and do the decent thing.
That is the change that Britain needs.
It’s the change that I will bring.
