Jeremy Corbyn's New Year Message

I think it’s fair to say, that 2016 is a year that will live long in all our memories.

It saw twelve months of enormous change not just in Britain but the world.

But the New Year gives all the opportunity to start afresh.

One of the best things about my job as Leader of the Labour Party is meeting some fantastic people all over the country. But every day I see the political system letting down the people of this country; how decisions made in Westminster are making people’s lives harder. Whether that’s elderly people not receiving the care at home they deserve, putting huge strain on them and their family, or whether it’s the people waiting longer in A&E or on trolleys because our National Health Service and social care system is at breaking point, despite the best efforts of the wonderful and dedicated staff.  Whether it’s the homeless families who are being priced out of a housing market that only works for the few. This Christmas, 120,000 children didn’t have a home to call their own. That’s scandalous. And it’s damaging those young people’s formative years. Our children also need a first class education for everyone, not just for a privileged few.

 As well as insecure housing there is massive insecurity at work too. Millions of people can’t plan their lives because whether on temporary or zero hours contracts they don’t know what job or what hours they’ll have from day to day, week to week or month to month. And for many, pay is so low that it doesn’t make ends meet.

2016 will be defined in history by the referendum on our EU membership. People didn’t trust politicians and they didn’t trust the European Union. I understand that. I’ve spent over 40 years in politics campaigning for a better way of doing things, standing up for people, taking on the establishment, and opposing decisions that would make us worse off.

We now have the chance to do things differently. To build an economy that invests and works for everyone across all our nations and regions.

Labour accepts and respects the result of the referendum. We won’t be blocking our leaving the European Union, but we won’t stand by. Those in charge today have put the jobs market, housing, the NHS and social care in crisis. We can’t let them mess this up. It’s about everyone’s future. A Brexit that protects the bankers in the City and continues to give corporate handouts to the biggest companies is not good enough.

Labour was founded to stand up for people, and we founded the institutions that do that day in, and day out, like our NHS. We are the party that listens to you and makes Britain better. Let’s do that, together, in 2017.

The case for Labour's Banking Reforms

Ordinary British people are facing the worst cost of living crisis in a generation.  We here in relatively prosperous South Leicestershire are no exception.

Prices are soaring, wages are falling, working people are £1,600 per year worse off and small businesses are struggling to access the finance they need to grow. Yet David Cameron continues to demonstrate how out of touch he is with the struggles millions are facing and is determined to operate our economy as business as usual.

Members of Lutterworth and Broughton Astley Labour Party are delighted that Labour has made firm plans to help people struggling with the rising cost of living, such as Ed Miliband's pledge to freeze energy bills until 2017. But as important as this pledge is, it only helps to deal with the consequences of our current economic state, and not the symptoms.

The Tory-led Government has failed to make the long-term changes needed to build a new economy that works for everyone and not just a few at the top.

The Tories won’t build a new economy that can tackle the cost of living crisis. They are determined to cling on to the old economy in a global race to the bottom. They think low wages, low skills and insecure work is the way to take Britain forward in the hope that some of the wealth will trickle down from the top. 

If we’re serious about dealing with the cost of living crisis and winning the race to the top with countries like China and India, then we need to build a new economy that works for everyone, and that means dealing with one of Britain’s broken markets: our banking system that works for banks but not for businesses and families.

Britain’s banking system is dominated by just four banks that control 85 per cent of small business lending. This lack of competition is a root cause of poor service, a breakdown of trust and a massive drop of £56bn in lending to business since May 2010.

Part of the reason we rely too much on low paid, insecure work is that the small firms that could create the good, high paying jobs of the future can’t get the finance they need to grow both themselves and our economy.

Of course we need to keep supporting Magna Park and the international companies based there. But we mustn't forget that our local economy depends on small and medium-sized businesses. Even our villages have small business parks which are key to growing our future economy. For these enterprises to thrive, government must promote a wider range of banks that have to compete harder with each other for customers.



That’s why the next Labour Government will bring in a legal threshold to ensure no bank can get too big and that the market remains competitive for the long-term. We will improve the amount of lending to small businesses, improve the service to all customers and create new banks that will work for the communities they serve.

Under a Labour Government, small businesses will have a better chance of getting the support they need to grow, employ more people at decent wages and help Britain earn its way to better living standards for everyone.

Why May 8 is important

Today, the Queen goes to the House of Lords to read out 'her' government's agenda for the next session.  This is important in its way but not that important as it will largely consist of a list of sometime-never initiatives that will grab tomorrow's headlines but then sink quietly into the swamp of forlorn political hopes.

Far more importantly, today marks just two years to go until General Election day when the electorate can show what it thinks of five years of pointless austerity which has seen the rich get richer, the rich pay less and less tax (quite an achievement this, given that many government donors have never paid any), the food bank movement become one of few remaining growth endeavours, energy and water cartels cease to pay any attention whatsoever to so-called official watchdogs, and bankers become far and away the biggest recipients of state handouts.

I look forward to it.