I’m a working class kid done good, but it wasn’t a straight line.

Full statement

I spent years working admin jobs and call centre work, topped up with Universal Credit and sometimes sleeping on friend’s sofas and in colleague’s spare rooms. What I learnt there was that the link between hard work and a dignified life has been brutally severed. Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have made that more and more true. There are too many people slogging their guts out to stand still. I was one of them, but I got lucky. I got a break. I had to graft to get ahead but I was able to do it, because of good people who held their hands out to help me. I am in politics because I want to give people back the chance to work their way to a good and dignified life for themselves and their families. I don’t just want to hold my hand out, I want to close the gap so that nobody has to. That’s not something that I can do by myself, nobody can. I remember when I was a kid, on the council estate with concrete roads in inner-city Birmingham where I was born, all of the neighbours coming round to help my Dad dig out a hedge. I remember Charlie, the brickie next door who kept racing pigeons, going round to the old lady’s across the street every week to put her bins out for her. I remember people helping each other. That’s why I’m in the Labour Party, the party that understands in our blood that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we can achieve alone. It is only by coming together, in our institutions of collective self-help – trade unions, co-operatives, local government and soon, we hope, Parliament and national government – that we can get Britain back on track. For too long under the Conservatives Britain has been run down and let down. It’s time for a change. It’s time to vote Labour.