Labour Conference 2024: A new era of hope and progress
It was great to attend Labour conference in Liverpool this week - the party’s first in power in 15 years.
As I said at Congress, we are not going to agree with this government on everything. We can see this with our Congress policy, recently reaffirmed by unions, which asks the government to rethink its decision on the winter fuel allowance.
But it was good to hear Angela Rayner, Rachel Reeves and Keir Starmer all talk about the importance of the New Deal for Working People in their keynote speeches.
This wouldn’t have happened without us and all the hard work of our unions.
Challenges and opportunities ahead
No one is pretending the next few years is going to be an easy ride.
But after 14 years of Tory chaos and ruin - we have a shared mission with this government to repair and rebuild this country and to bring back hope to our politics.
From all the meetings I had with ministers and journalists, it was clear that unions are rightfully seen again as key stakeholders and influencers.
Our priorities moving forward
It is vital that we build on this and that we see that New Deal delivered in full.
It is vital that we deal with that recruitment and retention across our public services
And it is vital that - after more than a decade of rudderless leadership - Britain has a proper industrial strategy again to invest in our communities and create jobs.
There has been a fair bit of negativity over the last few weeks - with the right doing all it can to undermine this new administration.
But I was in the hall when the Prime Minister announced the Hillsborough Law and a binding commitment to securing justice for the 96.
This is just one example of the difference Labour in government can make.
TUC's presence
I want to finish by thanking all the TUC staff who were in Liverpool this week - and to everyone who helped organise our presence there.
Our stand looked fantastic and was frequently visited by ministers, MPs and delegates.
Our New Deal postcards - which featured personalised testimony from workers affected by insecure work - were given to dozens of parliamentarians.
And our fantastic team did a brilliant job of representing the TUC at various fringes and events.
Looking ahead: a busy October
As we say goodbye to September - we just have the small matter of the Employment Rights Bill and the Budget to come in October.
It’s going to be busy a few weeks.
Stay Updated
Want to hear about our latest news and blogs?
Sign up now to get it straight to your inbox