Patrick Hurley

I acknowledge that a million people want the Government to change course. The petitioners who have put their names to the petition say that the people want change, but they are not the majority of people in this country. There are tens and tens of millions of people in this country and only 1 million people signed the petition. Here’s the news: the people actually got change in 2024. Eighteen months ago, we got a Government who explicitly said they would not just go and put sticking plasters on the gaping wounds of the previous 14 years. We got a Government who explicitly said it would take a decade of national renewal. That is what we went to the people with 18 months ago, and that is what they were happy to vote for. We said it would take a decade to fix the country’s problems and the mess the Conservatives left us in. The people who want change now are the very same people who want to go back to the years of stagnation and decline under the Conservatives—the years of austerity under Eric Pickles, George Osborne and Michael Gove, and, of course, the self-harming referendum that has done this country no favours whatsoever.