Gordon Brown Election 2017

thank you, and let me say first of all, today and in days to come, we

will all weep tears of sorrow and grief at the loss of so many young

lives in Manchester at the hands of terrorists, children, teenagers,

young parents, and we also standing or today at the amazing work done by

emergency services, from doctors and nurses, to the police, to the army,

to the security services, the ordinary people of Manchester. Too

many lives have been taken, but what we showed this week is that what has

not been taken by terrorists is our unity, our solidarity and our

support for each other, hearts are broken, but our resolve is

unbreakable. Lives have been destroyed, but our spirit is

indestructible. They thought that we would get in, but we have shown that

we keep going, and Manchester today and for years to come will be a

global symbol for courage and for defiance and for unity. If anybody

is in any doubt about how we will stand up to terrorism, if anybody

thinks that terrorism will weaken us through fear or destroy our

communities and divide them, or if they will shake our resolve, then

let them go to Manchester today and any other day in the future. I am

proud of Manchester. Let's set struts map -- send a message that we

stand in solidarity with them. I'm very pleased to be back in Greenock

today. First of all to congratulate Natasha for winning the council seat

for the first time and giving such a wonderful speech, to congratulate

Martin and Steve on winning the council and having a wonderful

Labour group. And I'm particularly pleased to support a friend of mine

who I know would make a brilliant member of Parliament for this area,

Martin McCluskey. Born in this area, brought up locally at primary school

here, his grandfather a union leader to stay few yards along here on the

Clyde, and his mother, a midwife at the hospital that the SNP want to

cut maternity services from. The Tories say they will stand up

against Europe, and the SNP say they will stand for independence, but it

is Martin McCluskey that will stand up for the NHS, for justice, for

fairness and equality and you need to give him your vote in the

election. I was a young candidate once, and in 1983 when I was first

elected to parliament, which seems a long time ago, I put on my

manifested, this constituency means a youth of fresh ideas. When I stood

at my last election, I had to put on the manifesto, this constituency

needs a member of Parliament of maturity and experience. But you

know this, Matt Machan ski, youth and fresh ideas, but maturity and

experience guide his ears. He will make a brilliant member of

Parliament fighting on every issue for the people of Inverclyde. The

Conservatives want to put this election on one issue. She says she

wants us to strengthen her hand against the Europeans. She will not

tell us what that hand is, how she will fight for shipbuilding or the

financial services for manufacturing, for all the jobs I

depended on our membership of the European Union. What she wants is a

free hand. She wants is to sign a blank cheque. If she were ever to

use the French plan was, it would be carte blanche. We cannot afford to

give any Tory leader or Government a free hand. I will tell you now, why

it matters here. I looked at the figures before I came here for child

poverty in this town and in this district. 35%, one in every three

children in Greenock today Apple -- are poor. You know the figures are

twice that in the poorer areas than the wealthy areas. We need even be

bare MP fighting to expose not that poverty -- poverty will rise to 40%

in this constituency unless we have a Labour MP fighting against what

they are doing. Look at what is happening across the whole of

Britain. In the 1980s under Mrs Thatcher, 3 million children were in

poverty. By the time the Tories left office in 1997, there were 4 million

short in poverty. We prop property down with the child tax credit,

raising benefits, stewards start, the minimum wage, the tax credit is

built around the minimum wage, but then after 2010, poverty started

rising again. And last year, it was 3.9 million in Britain. 4.1 million

this year. It will rise according to all of the forecasts of reputable

bodies to 5 million children, 5.1 million children by 2022. More

poverty under Mrs May than under Mrs Thatcher. A Britain that she says

she's going to unite but will be more socially divided and economic

with polarised than ever. A Conservative Party that says they

are for the many and not the few, but their policy is hurting the many

was helping the few, and we cannot allow that to happen. Do you know

what is worse? Three quarters of the children in poverty are in families

where someone is working, and that is why we need a rise in the minimum

wage, why we need tax credits, why we need more jobs that are better

paying, why we need to fight for new jobs in this area that Martin Laird.

That is why Martin is needed as a Labour MP for this constituency. It

is not just poverty that is rising. It is low income for so many

families. If you look at what the predictions are for the next few

years under the Tories, what they are not talking about. If child

benefit is not going to rise, it will rise by 2% only over a decade

where prices have gone up 35%, then families are hit. If the working tax

credit is not to rise, it will rise by 4% over a decade and rising nine

times as fast. If there are less good paying jobs cars, as we know,

and if an planet rises as much as it will in Scotland, then we will know

that what will happen in the next three years is that living standards

for the majority of people are going to stay the same fall. And I tell

you, 23 million people according to the resolution foundation which

published these figures just a few days ago and need to be looked at in

detail, 23 million people in this country will face a fall in their

living standards that is ?1000 or more by 2020. If your child benefit

is not going up, if wages in the public sector are only going up by

1%, in some cases wages are frozen, and if housing benefit no longer

covers rent and if the other services are being diminished, then

it is obvious that living standards for large numbers of people, 45% of

the population are going to fall. If you run 21,000, which is what you

would get at the end of the day if there was a family working on the

minimum wages working all hours available with two children, then

you will see ?1000 cut in your living standards by 2020. If you run

31,000 a year, because you have two people working in the family and if

at the same time you have two children, you will see a cut of

?3000 a year. If you are on 14,000 a year, a single parent with only one

wage working part-time and with two children, venue will see a ?2000 put

in your living standards. Make no mistake, this is the stagnation and

nation for the next few years, living standards will fall, and it

is time the Conservatives were honest about what they were doing,

and it is because of that we need a Labour MPs speaking up not just for

those who artwork, but for every member of the community in the

Inverclyde area, and that is Martin McCluskey. What kind of people are

they did talk about the ability and security when we now know that

nurses are having to go to food banks? What kind of people are they

when food banks are running out of food and they do nothing about it?

What kind of people do they take is for when they say they say their

motto is God helps those who help themselves. We see with inequality

rising, God helps those who he has already helped. That is what the

Tory party 's plans for. The SNP are collaborators in this rise in

poverty and this attack on living standards. Let's be absolutely

clear. The Scottish National Party in Government in Edinburgh have the

power to do something about this. Why? Because Martin was one of the

people who worked on the powers that the Scottish Parliament house to

enable it to deal with child poverty. And to deal with pensioner

poverty, and family poverty. They have the power to top up child

benefit. Kezia Dugdale has proposed raising it. They can top up the

pension credits with the power to do something about housing benefit. But

poverty among children has risen to 200,000 in Scotland, and then two

years ago, to 220,000 during children. And it will rise by 2020,

if the powers Tories are in power. And the SNP Government are doing

nothing about it. Inequality and poverty and deprivation will last

until doomsday if Ms Sturgeon and the SNP Government are all but are

confronted and that is why we need a Labour member of Parliament standing

up for the people of this area. It is not just the failure in poverty

and tackling poverty. It is a failure in the health service that

Martin has just highlighted. Did you know that there were 1300 people in

Scotland who were promised that they would get cancer treatments within

62 days, it promised we made, that the SNP said they would have polled,

but they did not receive the treatment. There were people

promised A treatment at a hospital in Scotland within four hours, and

the SNP promised it, but they have broken that promise. And there are

15, 16 people a month waiting on health service waiting lists,

waiting for treatment promised within 18 weeks of going to the

doctor, and that promise has been broken to them as well. And that

means around 200,000 people a year that who were told that the health

service would be safe in the hands of the Scottish Government under the

SNP and now finding that every single major promise about the

future of the health service has been broken. You see it here in

Inverclyde. And you see what is happening. It happened in

Dunfermline, in my own area a few years ago. Maternity services, in

this case, the midwife service units, now they plan to move it to

another hospital and away from the local people who need it. And

another unit, and then possibly another unit. You have got to stand

up and fight, and I know the best person for that in Westminster is

Martin McCluskey who has already said this is a centrepiece of the

campaign. You have got to ask yourself all the time, in whose

hands is the health service safe? Is it safe in the hands of the Tory

party? They voted against the health service in the first place. They now

have many people on waiting lists throughout the UK and are doing

nothing about it. It is safe in the hands of the SNP? Who are about to

take ?1 billion away from the health services as a result of their

courts? And that affects Inverclyde and every area of Scotland. Or is

it, as I believe is true, safe in the hands of those people in the

Labour Party, who saw in the 1930s and 40s that nurses had to leave the

bed of the patients to run charity days to support the health service

and decided we needed a public one that was free of charge. They not

only build the health service, but that between 1997, troubled the

services that and will fight single day for a health service that is

free at the point of need irrespective of the money they have.

And your local Let's also be clear about what is

happening to education because the SNP... I have young children and I

can see at first hand, are rejecting... We have lost teachers

and classroom assistants. Remember the promise that sizes would not go

down? We kept it when we made it. They have broken their promise on

classroom sizes and it is time they were held to account. And what about

the reports a few days ago on reading and as reading and writing

standards in our schools and what has happened to arithmetic and the

major subjects that are taught in secondary schools? At the age of 13,

according to an international league table, we are falling down...

Scotland has prided itself in our education system for centuries and

now standards in our schools are falling, teachers being removed and

at the same time investment not taking place where it is absolutely

essential. And you will know from the colleges. 130,000 places removed

from the colleges in the ten years that the SNP have been in office.

But is young people, mature students, mothers trying to return

to work, denied the chance of getting qualifications at colleges

because the SNP decided that colleges and the education of those

who had lost out sometimes at school and needed the chance of further

education came second to all their other objectives. I say the party of

education is the Labour Party and you will see from what your council

tries to do and what Martin tries to do that we will make education top

of our priorities. But you know something else? And this really

disturbs me. Unemployment is rising in Scotland in the next two years.

The institute at Strathclyde University, we are not being told

about this by the Tories or the SNP. They said unemployment will rise to

167,000 over the next two years. And that is a huge rise affecting this

community and many other communities in Scotland and while we have

proposals, Martin's proposal is to make sure that this area has the

jobs that make it one of the great centres would trade in the future,

proposals that we get contracts from the North Sea that would help the

shipbuilding industry, proposals to build a power universities so that

we can invest in the new technologies of the future, we need

the party 's proposals and we need them now if we are going to the jobs

that are now being put at risk. And it comes down to this. The SNP,

obsessed about independence, put the needs and aspirations for education

and for health care and for jobs secondary to their principal

objective and the Conservatives as you can see obsessed about Europe

and leaving it, they put their Brexit aspirations second even to

jobs and to the future living standards of the British people. Two

extremes. One party obsessed about Europe, one other obsessed about

independence. One party the Conservatives wanting us to leave

Europe and have nothing to do with it while staying in Britain, the

other party wanting us to leave Britain and have nothing to do with

it and wanting to stay in Europe. And it affects jobs. One party

wanting to leave the European single market, a quarter of a million jobs

depend on it. Another party wanting to leave the British single market.

1 million jobs linked to our trade with the rest of the United Kingdom

and we cannot have these two extremes vying with each other for

the future. There is a far more common way ahead. It is labour that

offers a better way of uniting Scotland. It is labour that offers a

better way of bridging the divide in our community. Put the needs and

aspirations of Scottish people first. Build a constitutional

settlement for Scotland around taking powers from Brussels and

bringing them back to Edinburgh rather than to Whitehall, making

sure the Scottish Parliament has the powers to deal with the jobs issues

I have talked about for the future but at the same time recognising

that we need the strength and to be part of the strong United Kingdom

when it comes to our fiscal pollies, our currency and our borders, when

and the SNP policies have ever added up and nothing they have said since

the referendum makes me think they will ever add in the future. No to

the two extremes and more support for the better way forward that can

unite Scotland in the future and it comes down in the end to what is in

our DNA. What makes us tick and what we believe matters. The SNP get a

morning and they think about how they can get to independence. The

Tories only think about how they can get us out of Europe. The Lib Dems

are thinking about coalitions with anybody and anyone. Ukip no longer

get up in the morning. The Tories have stolen all their clothes. But

Labour, we get up in the morning and we think, how can we advance social

justice, how can we make for a fairer and better society and we

believe if one person dreams, it is simply a dream but if we all dream

about the future, the best way together, then that dream can become

a reality, a more just society for all time. We cannot truly be content

when there are so many people in our society discontented. We can't be

truly secure when there are so many people and millions of people

feeling insecure. We can't really be at ease as a Labour supporter when

we know there are millions of people ill at ease in our society and it is

not anti-wealth to say that we must do more, the wealthy must do more to

help those who are not wealthy. It is not anti-business to say those

who have been successful in business should do more to help those who

have never had the chance in business and it is not anti-markets

to say that markets yes they can be free but they cannot be values free.

Markets exist to serve the community and we must ensure that they are

underpinned by morals too. Politics goes in cycles, we know that, we see

it in our own experience. We can beat up one minute and down the

next. We were a success in the 60s and by the 80s we were in

difficulty. We won handsomely in 1997 and then have been out of

government for seven years. We can be the darlings of the media one day

and the same newspaper columnist can be attacking us as enemies of the

people the next day. But all through that and particularly when it is

tough, this is the time, it is always the time to stand up for what

we believe. I say to you this, if Martin McCluskey is not there in

Parliament from this area to stand up for the health service, who

really will? If Martin McCluskey is not there to speak for the children

who have been condemned to poverty, do you think there is anybody else

of any of you the parties who will? If Martin McCluskey is not there to

talk what the needs of children for education and the needs for the

future none that have got to be met by better jobs and who is going to

be there to stand up this community 's best needs and noblest

aspirations? I believe that the issue when the election comes in a

few days' time, vote Labour, vote for Martin McCluskey, stand up for

Martin McCluskey so that when he is elected, he can stand with you.

Thank you very much.