Bringing misery to millions

Here’s something that will shock you: I agree with a Tory minister.  When Justine Greening said that her party was failing working class kids, she was dead right.

What she didn’t admit though is that Cameron and Osborne are incapable of doing anything about it.

Nearly one million of our 18-24 year olds are on the dole. Hundreds of thousands of them have never had a job.

They’re unlikely to get one in Tory Britain either.

Poverty pay, insecurity, crazy living costs are a plague on our people.  Our communities, not the leafy shires, are reaping a whirlwind – of falling wages, growing inequality and the wilful destruction of our beloved NHS.

Diseases of poverty like rickets and malnutrition are back.

Good jobs are disappearing.  Second-rate, insecure ones are on the rise, condemning decent working people to a prison of poverty, working harder but getting poorer.

Cameron cannot con us into accepting 4.5 million in self-employment as a good thing, not when it leaves one in six workers without rights.

Osborne’s desperate efforts to claim recovery are rubbished by the evidence which proves that this is the longest recession and slowest recovery since the great depression. Out in the real world, recovery is as elusive as unicorns.

Yet the austerity addicts in Westminster threaten more of the same pain if they get back into power in 2015. ÂŁ20bn more in cuts even though 70 per cent of their 2010 cuts have yet to hit.

This is Britain in the twenty-first century.  The sixth richest country on the planet has been shamefully reduced to a nation of foodbanks for the poor but expanded privilege for the rich.

Shame on this cabinet of millionaires.  They have brought misery to millions but have gone the extra mile for their rich mates – literally, when Osborne dashed to Brussels to fight off new laws that would rein in his banker buddies.

In 242 days we can get rid of this rabble.

We can say we’re taking our country back.

No more gift-wrapping our NHS for Wall St – we pay for it, work in it, depend on it – it is ours, get your filthy hands off it.

We can demand better for our kids than a life drowned in debt with no hopes for their future.

We can say to business, cough up – you’ve exploited our people’s hard graft long enough, now pay a living wage.

And we can say to those who swindle our country out of the taxes they owe, no more free rides – with jail for accountancy crooks who make a mint peddling scams.

This week unions representing 6.5 million working people will lead the calls for a better Britain.  We terrify Cameron and his cronies because we carry with us the hopes of ordinary men and women, hopes this mindless government can never begin to understand.

Ed Miliband, this is why you must stay true to yourself.  Lead a Labour party that is brave, that has the courage to bring genuine change to our nation, that convinces the people it is on their side. Then the keys to No10 will rightly be yours.

And to the PM and his Bullingdon Bullies, well here’s a piece of free advice from the trades union Congress.  Start drafting your CVs because the people’s P45s are heading your way.

•    This article first appeared in Sunday Mirror, September 7