John Healey: “I will oversee strong fiscal discipline”

Our social security system must always be there for those who can never work. But for everyone else, benefits should be a bridge to work, to wider participation, to a better life, not a trap that people can’t escape.

The money New Labour had in the nineties is simply not there now.

Britain has it harder now. We had 13 years of flatlining tory growth in living standards when Cameron’s austerity gutted our public services, when Johnson’s Brexit hammered our exports and Truss’s mini budget crashed our economy.

Fundamentally, what we need is a settlement in the Middle East.