BURSTShadow chief treasury secretary Richard Fuller says Nigel Farage’s party must do more than just ‘point at problems’
Labour MP Rachael Maskell has urged her party to scrap winter fuel and welfare policies that she said are pushing voters away, reports the PA news agency.
The York Central MP told BBC Breakfast that Labour has “special responsibilities” to serve the needs of people.
We’re not any other political party, we were created to serve the needs of people across working areas of our country so that people had a real voice of the kind of change that they wanted to see.
I think it’s now time, if Labour are going to go further faster, to pick up that voice, to put our fingers on the pulse and to understand that that responsibility that the 1945 government set out putting that safety net in place at the welfare state is on our watch and is our responsibility.
People went cold last winter and that’s not what a Labour government should be doing.
We have got that mandate, I believe, as a party to look at how we can better redistribute wealth, as opposed to taking out of the pockets of the poorest.
In short I want national renewal. But that can only be built if people across the country have security in their lives and that will only happen if we have a secure economy, a secure health service and secure borders. Change on that scale will take time. But it is my focus, now and every day ahead.
The lesson of these elections isn’t that the country needs more politicians’ promises or ideological zealotry. It isn’t that there is some easy solution, as promised by our opponents. It’s that now is the time to crank up the pace on giving people the country they are crying out for.
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