Now that was a good conference!
Last week I took the Labour campaign for East Worthing and Shoreham to the party’s Annual Conference in Bournemouth. I was lucky enough to be called to speak in the debate on prosperity and work on Tuesday afternoon – the day after Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave his fantastic address in which he set out his vision for our country.
In my speech I tried to get over just how important the last ten years of Labour have been for the people of East Worthing and Shoreham – the minimum wage, increased maternity and paternity rights, the New Deal among the many, many measures which have helped make people’s lives easier. I pointed to the huge investments in health and education, which have helped transform educational achievement, and led to huge improvements in the treatment of, and the survival rates from, heart disease and cancer.
But as I said too, there is a lot left to do. Too many young people – among them some of the friends I went to primary school with – still leave school at 16, unmotivated and disillusioned. They don’t seem to believe that further education or training is for them. So the really good achievements we get at 11 often seem to fall away. Something is going wrong when young people don’t feel they have a stake in society.
And we need to take a long hard look at social care, about how we as a society treat senior citizens, whether the range of services is sufficient to enable older people to retain their independence for as long as possible, and whether the care they receive when they need to have more residential support is as good as it could be.
Above all, we need to address the issue of housing – as pressing in East Worthing and Shoreham as in other parts of the country. It cannot be right that young people are priced out of the housing market, that key workers find it impossible to find accommodation at a price they can afford near their place of work, that social housing is too often not on offer to people who need it. We need a housing revolution in this country, with government, local councils, housing associations and private builders all playing their part.
I was lucky enough to be interviewed by some of the TV, radio and print journalists covering conference, and I tried in those interviews to get some of these points across.
It’s true that many journalists picked up on the fact that I am the youngest candidate ever selected – but I tried to make it clear that being selected as the Labour candidate is a fantastic honour, and that I am going the use this wonderful opportunity to listen to the people of this constituency and help them make their voices count.
I may be young, but this campaign can be a symbol of what a new generation can do in partnership with people of all ages. We can challenge cynicism, we can defeat disillusionment. We can raise turnout as we show that politics matters to everyone.
No one knows when the next election is going to be – but we need to start campaigning in East Worthing and Shoreham now. If you would like to help my campaign, please contact me via.
I came down to East Worthing and Shoreham today to meet Labour Party members – and to visit our Constituency Secretary Andy Bray, who is in hospital. All of us wish Andy a speedy recovery and send him our best.
I will post details of my next campaigning visit later this week. I hope to see you then.
