My Labour party conference speech.

Too often when I've listened (particularly) to Jeremy Corbyn, then to Keir Starmer & the other potential Labour leaders, I think they get the tone of their speeches all wrong. They flip flop around too much, trying to sound both business friendly and socialist, patriotic & republican. There are contradictions everywhere, anyway this is the speech I'd make if I was one of them.....

"For too long in our party, too long in our country, we've become bogged down in labels. We're stuck in politics bubble speak in which the vast majority of the public aren't interested. 

Our politics have become locked into a binary yes or no questionaire which bares no resemblance or relevance to peoples real lives. If we aren't a Brexiter, we must therefore by definition be a remainer. If we aren't left wing, then as sure as night follows day we must surely be right wing. To the folks who lose their jobs and can't find another, those who have a parent waiting years for an urgent operation or whose kids go to a crumbling state school, labels and catchphrases don't matter. For those people, yes/no tick box questionaires are irrelevant. They simply want someone in charge of the country who cares, properly cares, and tries their best to make stuff better.

And people out there in the four corners of our great land aren't stupid either. Categorizeing those who voted for Brexit as fools is as wrong as it is insulting. Similarly, those who call for more state intervention, more real and tangible support for the less well off aren't day-dreamers, any more than they are rabid communists.

It's time for a new politics, one where we respect not just each other, but each other's opinion and right to have one too. It's high time we respected each other's right to live in peace and harmony, each other's right to be able to live both young and old with dignity and honour.

For example respecting someone's right to start a business, to run it effectively and be given a chance by the tax system is not raving right wing nonsense. We need people to be successful, and when they are it's only right that they can become prosperous based on their efforts. That's how our society works, entrepreneurial people getting on, making business work, providing employment. It's not right-wing nor left-wing, it's common sense.

Similarly, saying it's not fair to sack workers then offer them re-employment on a palpably worse contract isn't left-wingism, it's common sensism. It isn't right, it isn't fair and it should be against the law. 

Saying that we must respect the outcome of the Brexit referendum doesn't make us raving Brexiteers, it makes us democrats. The people voted for it, now it's up to the politicians to make it work to the very best of their ability. No "isms" except common senseism, politicians are paid to do a job, it's about time they got on with it.

On that "making it work" idea, the people who voted for Brexit didn't do it so our fishermen wouldn't be able to sell shellfish into Europe. They didn't do it so our farmers would have to leave crops to rot in fields, so our exporters would see their access to their nearest market decimated. Nor did they vote Brexit in order to rip up the Good Friday agreement and see tensions bubble over in Northern Ireland. It doesn't have to be like that, it can be so much better. Clearly we need to extend a hand of friendship across the channel, to work better with our friends in Europe. This isn't remainerism any more than it's rejoinerism, it's common senseism. It's time we said so, there has been too much brinkmanship, too much showboating, too much silliness for way too long.

The time has come for a serious government, maybe even slightly boring government. That's OK though, if being trustworthy, telling the truth, having  departments which actually function properly isn't very entertaining, it's something the country will live with.

It's time for those that are well suited to a career in after dinner speaking or appearing as a panelist on a game show answered their calling in life. The country needs a rebuild, a new trust between the voters and those in the corridors of power is long overdue.

It's time for a bit of common senseism, it's time for Labour".

There, hope you like it.