Quote

I come from a generation that suffered school lessons in portacabins and crumbling hospitals. I tell you one thing, for the eighteen years they were in power the Tories did nothing to fix the roof when the sun was shining.

During the last economic slowdown in the 1990s, the Tories slashed infrastructure investment. I am determined not to make that mistake.

My hope that Thatcher would inadvertently bring about a new political revolution was well and truly bogus. All that sprang out of Thatcherism were extreme financialisation, the triumph of the shopping mall over the corner store, the fetishisation of housing and Tony Blair.

Every time the Tories get a bit of power, they rip off all the things I love... The mining industry. Milk.

In the 1980s and 1990s, radical change in economic policies fostered by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher put the brakes on government planning and ushered in a new free-market supply-side era and a two-decade boom. That model has been abandoned in the new century. This must be reversed.

As the economy faces such difficulties, more tough questions need to be asked about what the Tories would do if elected. Their ideology of free markets and small government needs challenging. That has to be part of our job.

Britain today is suffering from galloping obsolescence.

Globalisation feels like a runaway train, out of control.

You know the illusion of the cheap money is over and now Britain has to go out there and graft and earn its way and create wealth and prosperity in a very competitive world.

Even if the government spends itself into bankruptcy and the economy still does not recover, Keynesians can always say that it would have worked if only the government had spent more.