There has to be a better alternative
The country could be weeks away from a fresh General Election.
A month into his premiership and Boris Johnson seems to be on a collision course with parliament. His working majority has been reduced to just one, following a record by-election defeat, and that’s assuming he can still count on the support of the DUP.
Johnson’s government, like Theresa May’s before him, remains mired in
Brexit chaos. The country is hurtling towards the nightmare no-deal scenario and it seems there is little regard in Downing Street for the anxiety, disruption and economic pain a nodeal Brexit could bring. So, ruinous is the populism that Boris Johnson and today’s Conservative Party now represent.
The country needs an alternative. An alternative way through the Brexit turmoil and an alternative that will get politics back to what it should be about – making a real, lasting and positive difference in people’s lives.
Not more uncertainty. Not more division. Certainly not an independence referendum, with all the risks and instability that would bring. But an alternative government with different priorities. Priorities more closely aligned with those of ordinary working people in Paisley and across the country.
The only serious alternative to a Tory government led by Boris Johnson is a Labour government focused on the real needs of communities like ours.
Take the economy. Around the world, experts are sounding warnings about the prospect of another recession. Productivity is stagnating, levels of business investment in the UK economy are tumbling, prices are rising and GDP is contracting. Here in Paisley and in communities right across the country, real wages have still not recovered to levels last reached before the financial crisis.
In the UK we are fortunate enough to live in the fifth richest country in the world. But that means little to those who do not have a fair share of the nation’s wealth. Those who feel the system is rigged against them. Those frustrated that the economic policies of the governments they have elected are increasingly part of the problem, not the solution.
A new government with an alternative plan for the economy could choose to invest in those people instead. Labour’s National Transformation Fund would ramp up investment in infrastructure in every part of the country, overcoming years of neglect. Labour’s industrial strategy would support businesses to create new, high-skilled, high-paid, secure work. Instead of pandering to wants of big business, we could put small business at the heart of a new strategy for the economy. We could build prosperity for the many, not just the few.
The choice at the next General Election is stark. You can choose more of the same: out of touch Tories like Boris Johnson, the rich getting richer, an economy that isn’t working and continued turmoil over Brexit. Or you can choose something better: a new government with a serious alternative, an end to the Brexit chaos, economic recovery and a country coming together to lift each other out of austerity.
That’s the choice for Paisley, whenever the next election might come.