A Little More Love, The Life and Legacy of Olivia Newton-John
Matthew Hild, Bloomsbury Academic, May 2026.
Thank you NetGalley and Bloomsbury Academic for providing me with this uncorrected proof for review.
Although the major expansion in Olivia Newton-John’s career took place after she left Australia, the early section of this biography set in Australia and Olivia Newton-John’s links with Australian identities gives it a strongly Australian feel. Later, it is the story of successes in the UK and America, introducing a host of songs and identities, and with Koala Blue opening, the birth of her daughter and visits to Australia, a return to Australian themes. Hild’s suggestion that Newton-John was far more than ‘nice’, the description with which she is often associated, remains the pattern for this biography. It mirrors Newton-John’s charming persona but, like the engaging person she was, the biography is far more than a nice story about a nice entertainer.
The story of Newton-John’s successes, Australian, British and American makes interesting reading, along with the many named songs with which she was successful to varying degrees. Her own writing, covers and material written for her are covered in detail. So, too, are her relationships with other singers, groups with whom she appeared and band members. Grease and her other films are discussed. Newton-John’s enduring decency and niceness, returned to at the end of the book, outlived Gease which marked her fictional change from a ‘goody two shoes’ as she commented at one time, to a markedly different character.
Her personal relationships also provide a flavour of the woman she was. Her early love, Australian Ian Turpie, provides a look at the young Olivia with both love and a career on her mind. She remained friends with him, and his wife too. Her other long-lasting relationships and marriages are dealt sympathetically, and there are detailed accounts of her feelings and beliefs throughout the period in which marriage was on the mind of interviewers. Hild reflects upon the way in which Olivia Newton-John dealt with her diagnosis of cancer, the remission years and her final discussions with friends, highlighting her work on cancer awareness.
On the broader stage, Hild examines the way in which Newton-John’s entry (and triumph) to the country and western musical scene was received. He also raises the way in which her physical appearance impacted the way her music was received. There is a thoughtful observation on the value of popular music and Newton-John’s self-confident approach to producing music that made people want to listen. Part of the appeal of this biography also lies in the way in which topics seemingly specific to Newton-John, such as the role of management or her problems with one recording company, become part of a wider history of the business.
The acknowledgements provide the most significant information about the way the work evolved. Conversations and emails with a host of friends and associates or their relatives; publicly available interviews with Olivia Newton-John, her family and friends made an important contribution to Hild’s ability to combine a thoughtful and intimate approach to his work with considerable detail about the processes, successes and disappointments of Newton-John’s career. There are photos, a select bibliography, an index and brief notes for each chapter.
American Politics
Consequences
Joyce Vance from Civil Discourse <joycevance@substack.com> Unsubscribe Tuesday 29 September 2026 Forwarded this email? Subscribe here
Last Thursday, the White House, almost as soon as Judge Kelly entered his order forcing the administration to restore access to CNN, MSNOW, and Politico, began searching for play in the joints. What could they do to punish the news outlets that had offended Donald Trump without getting hauled back into court? Even after the Judge had ordered restoration of hard passes to journalists, CNN’s Betsy Klein and MSNOW’s Laura Barrón-López were denied entry into the White House and had their passes confiscated. It wasn’t clear why they were refused entry—Barrón-López said on air that it wasn’t clear whether she was refused entry because the White House was defying the court order or due to “some kind of incompetence or lag in the system.”
It got worse. That evening, as reporters arrived to cover Xi Jinping’s arrival at the White House for the State Dinner Trump threw for him, reporters for CNN and MSNOW learned that they would not be admitted, as other reporters began to cover the event. Was the White House in violation of the court’s order? Technically, perhaps not. It applied to hard passes, and this was a question of whether the editorial journalists each organization selected could cover the dinner. But excluding them without warning, while admitting other journalists, hardly seems neutral or justified. Nor did the exclusion of CNN from pool coverage of Trump’s trip to Tennessee Saturday morning.When Trump first posted his ban on social media, he didn’t invoke national security as a justification for doing so. That didn’t happen until three days later, with his plan under attack in court. So his White House turned to the same argument they’d used with success to justify the ballroom—that it had a national security purpose. Judge Kelly noted the late adoption of that argument: “nothing in the record that predates this suit suggests that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes was motivated by national security concerns.”
It was hard to read the government’s pleadings, which suggested CNN and MSNOW are threats to national security, with a straight face, and the government had left itself an out in the letters it sent to them, which referenced reporting that “threatened national security and/or spread falsehoods.” But one man’s falsehood is another man’s truth, which is why we have a First Amendment in this country, and banning CNN and MSNOW for what Trump decreed spreading falsehoods would clearly violate it.
In other words, excluding the two from the Xi dinner and CNN from the Tennessee trip violated the spirit of the order, if not its letter. It’s clear defiance of the Constitution and our tradition of a free press.
So what should happen? It’s time—past time, really—for courts to hold this administration in contempt when it is. No bending over backward, no second chances. If the president of the United States fails to comply with court orders, he needs to be held to account. Here, the government arguably purged its contempt by restoring passes. But the fact that it turned around and retaliated against CNN and MSNOW should be more than just a footnote to the story.
I say this with all due respect because I suspect the Judge, and perhaps even the lawyers who could pursue the point, would disagree with me. Why poke the bear? Why pick the fight? They may think it’s better to get things back on track and move forward. But respectfully, that approach has not served us well. After taking office, Merrick Garland didn’t jump into investigating and prosecuting Trump and those around him for January 6. He likely hoped the country could move forward without becoming even more fractured. And I get that. Truly I do. But it didn’t work. Donald Trump doesn’t respect the law; he simply sees it as an impediment to doing what he wants to do. And when he learns he can get away with flouting it, he will not hesitate to do so again. And again.*
If Trump gets away with retaliating against the press in this context, he’ll continue to do it, perhaps to others and in still more situations. And we cannot afford that.
He banished the AP for refusing to call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. He called a journalist “Piggy,” telling her to be “quiet.” And on and on. Technical compliance with the law is enough for a judge, but it can’t be enough for the American people. Without a free press to keep us informed, Trump would be running roughshod. Sunlight is, in fact, the best disinfectant, as we saw again today when Justice Alito recused himself from hearing a climate change case where he has conflicts—after the press exposed them and activist groups called on him to step aside.
On Tuesday, the Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia will hear en banc argument in a case involving whether a federal judge can pursue contempt proceedings against the administration when he believes they violated his order, even though it was subsequently reversed by the Supreme Court on appeal. The law here is relatively clear—parties can’t ignore court orders, hoping that they’ll be reversed down the road. But as they so often do, this administration plays to the court of public opinion as well as courts of law, minimizing its conduct because of the subsequent reversal. They argue technicalities, because this is the case where Judge Boasberg ordered them to turn around flights carrying immigrants to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, and the administration’s line was that his orders were oral, not written, not clear, and that the planes were already out of U.S. airspace before the orders were given. Emil Bove, the DOJ employee who a whistleblower said under oath had told other lawyers at the Department “that D.O.J. would need to consider telling the courts ‘fuck you’ and ignore any such order,” is now a Third Circuit Court of Appeals judge, appointed by Donald Trump and confirmed by the Senate.
The world might look very different right now if Judge Boasberg had been permitted to pursue contempt proceedings back in the spring of 2025 and the administration had been held accountable. Instead, emboldened by his success, Trump has continued to treat the courts like a game to be played, not like a Constitution and an oath of office to be upheld. It would look different if the other news organizations that make up the White House pool continued to refuse to cover the president, so long as he violated the First Amendment right to a free press. But they haven’t.
And so, the Attorney General of the United States took to the Sunday shows to maintain that national security justified the decision to exclude CNN for Air Force One. ABC’s Martha Raddatz pushed Blanche for an example of CNN reporting inaccurately after Blanche—oh the irony—suggested that persistent misinformation and one-sided coverage can become a national-security concern. Then, they had the following exchange:
RADDATZ: The president said nothing about national security when he announced this ban, and clearly you’re very interested in what the press says and how they say it
BLANCHE: What they say is exactly the issue when it comes to national security
RADDATZ: Give us an example
BLANCHE: You cannot be asking me that!
RADDATZ: But the judge decided this was not based on national security
BLANCHE: It is a privilege not a right to be in the White HouseMSNOW’s Ken Dilanian underscored the point on Twitter, writing that “When the Justice Department lawyers filed papers in court about this—where there are repercussions for making false or unsupported assertions—they didn’t come up with a single example of misinformation or incorrect reporting to justify banning news organizations.”Heather Cox Richardson reported that as all of this was unfolding, Trump told reporters: “I love an open, free press. What I don’t like is the fake press. What we don’t want is—we don’t want fake news.” But it’s not up to Donald Trump to decide what’s free and what’s fake. It’s why we have a marketplace of ideas in this country, so that we can decide for ourselves. It’s time for the courts to remind Trump that he too is accountable, that truly, no man is above the law. It should have happened before this, but it’s not too late; it can happen now. Trump needs to understand that there are consequences for going after the press.
*My emphasis
And some positive news about education in America
Reality Check
In August 2026, ahead of the new school year, documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and PBS LearningMedia announced they would begin releasing professionally re-edited classroom versions of his films directly on his official YouTube channel, paired with built-in quizzes and curriculum-aligned teaching materials. The rollout started with “The American Revolution,” Burns’s six-part series on the founding era, and is expected to expand to cover more of his more-than-forty-film catalog over time.
Burns explained the move simply: he has always believed shared history should be accessible to everyone, and putting the content on YouTube meets teachers and students where they already are rather than requiring a separate platform or budget. A teacher with no funding for supplemental materials can now pull up a professionally produced history lesson on a Tuesday morning, free, because a filmmaker decided accessibility mattered more than keeping the work behind a paywall.
More of Spring in Canberra
Henry Oliver Interview with Walker Larson : AI and Literature
Comments from a recent interview Henry Oliver Sep 29
Here’s a brief section (I edited the Substack transcript a little for clarity) about AI and literature, which develops some of the thoughts I wrote up recently.
Walker Larson: How do you think the the rise of AI is going to change or influence our relationship with great books? Obviously it causes problems in schools, you know if you’re going to try to get students to write about books, then you have to contend with artificial intelligence. But even just how do you see it affecting the literary world? Will we see a resurgence of interest in classic books because they’re permanent, because they are not generated by artificial intelligence, but by real human beings with hearts and minds? Or will it just more and more obscure those works?
Henry Oliver For the first time in a long time, there’s real competition for the book people. And it’s really good. It’s getting better every day. And very soon, we’re going to experience the kind of disruption that has been relatively unknown. A lot of people will sort of disagree with that and think the internet was very disrupting to books and publishing and education and all the institutions around books. I suspect that once the AI revolution really gets underway, we will come to realize that the real competition is starting now and we’re going to be much more shaken up than we were before.
Ultimately, I think it’s going to be a good thing because AI will be much better than you at doing taxes or whatever, but there’s no point in having it read Tolstoy for you. Tolstoy cannot be summarized. Tolstoy can barely be explained. I mean, you know, it’s like saying I watched the weather report and believing that you have somehow experienced the storm that’s happening outside. Either you have been out and stood in the rain and heard the thunder and seen the lightning hit the tree or you haven’t. And that’s Tolstoy.
So one of the things that will be left to us entire and whole is the reading of literature. Because it is irreducible, it is irreplaceable. But one of the things that AI will be able to do is interact with scholarship and criticism. And some of the things that literary scholars currently do, AI is getting much better at doing. And some people will use AI. Some people will just sort of refuse on principle. Some people will use it. The people who use it will have, you know, the equivalent of dozens of other people working for them. It’s like getting research assistants. Go and tell me everything that the scholarship says about X. Once you’ve done that, go and look up such and such a thing in the archive and then find me this and then relate it to this. And the work is just going like that all the time. Once that starts happening, the way in which scholarship and criticism works will just have to change, right?
If we think we can sustain a model whereby it’s, you know, organic, it’s 100% human-made, no AI was consulted in the process, probably enough people will pay for those magazines that the old model will just carry on to some extent. But… We just have to accept that some incredibly bright young kid in Newcastle or Ohio or wherever is going to start doing things the new way.
So that that’s coming and that will change all the surrounding things about literature. And a lot of the other young people who are coming up may prefer that new way to our way. Or they may want a bit of both a bit like how a lot of people use AI for their therapy. Going to see a human and talking about your problems, you would think is pretty irreplaceable. Like, why confess to someone if it’s not a priest? But people do. So I just think it’s going to change. If it means that overall… There’s more humanities, there’s more discussion of literature, there’s more discovery of what’s actually in the historical record, what’s in the archives, there’s more suggestive information, like stylometric analysis can be done, all sorts of, like, if it means we end up with a lot more stuff like that, that can only be a good thing, right?
It may be that the people currently practicing those things are the ones who lose out but that the overall output is different and better. At the level of the school pupil, I’m not sure that AI is a problem because you’re no longer, I mean, a lot of people will not like the way I’m going to phrase this, but you’re no longer stuck with your teacher. You can have a different teacher if you want. And that, for many people, Depending on which part of the education system they’re in and how well it’s working and how well it suits them and whatever else. That may be very, very liberating. And it may be what gives them what they need. It may be the difference between low expectations and high expectations. So overall, I expect AI to do good things, but it will also be used in bad ways. And the final… The final equilibrium is some way away, and God knows what it really looks like.
British Politics
Andy Burnham’s speech to Labour Party Conference 2026
Sep 29, 2026
Thank you so much, Conference. Thank you.
And Nadia, I love you Nadia. I am so proud of you, so proud of you up on the stage. Thank you.
All Together Now. That’s my rallying call to the country today. When we pull as one, there is nothing we can’t do.
Today we draw a line on a decade of division. We stop doomscrolling on posts running Britain down. And we put the country on a new path.
Britain with belief again. People with hope again.
It’s very hard to put into words the emotion I feel standing here before you all.
For me, life truly has come full circle because this is where my story began. My grandad drove a lorry along these docks for Tate & Lyle.
My gran Kitty inherited the drive of her Irish ancestors. She walked three miles out of the bombed-out city after the war to put a deposit down on a house, without Jimmy’s knowledge actually. I wouldn’t do that to you John, wherever you are Chancellor!
She put a deposit down on a house. The house where I was born. It changed the fortunes of my family.
It was where my mum and dad started off, built a partnership and went on to create our own family home and filled it with life, love and laughter.
Eileen and Roy gave me a care for people. Forged by her faith, his politics and the values of this great city we are in again for our conference.
They guided me to the point where I stand before you today.
Ours is the same story of so many families, British families of my generation. A story of working-class aspiration. A desire to get on and give back, never pulling up the ladder. And a post-war Britain that backed them to do it.
It’s still there, as I saw in Stourbridge this summer. I watched a whole community getting stuck in to support those whose homes had been burnt down. Proof the British people haven’t changed. Still as great as they ever were.
But something is different these days. That sense of the powers-that-be pulling against the people not with them. If there’s one thing I want to put right, it’s that.
Imagine living in a Britain where people feel the country has their got back again. A Britain for everyone, no matter who we are or where we’re born. We would be unstoppable. And we will be.
Conference, I am 10 weeks into this job. And not all of my recent predecessors have been able to say that.
I’ve been thinking very carefully about what to say to you today. Of course I am here to speak to you, our Labour family. The other family that love so much.
For the historic victory he achieved for us, I am here to say thank you Keir. And to thank you to the whole of this conference and all of you for the backing that you have given me.
The politician in me wants to give the usual tub-thumping conference speech today. But the patriot in me tells me something very different is needed.
This country isn’t where any of us would want it to be. Politics-as-usual has taken it backwards. More of the same isn’t good enough. That’s why I feel I have to break the mould today.
I am going to give you a real speech.
I left Westminster a decade ago because of my frustration at its failure to face up to what happened at Hillsborough. Its refusal to treat all parts of the country equally and fairly. Its capitulation in the face of thesocial care crisis.
So I became an outsider from the Westminster club. When I asked the people Makerfield to support my return, it was not because I missed Westminster so much. It was to come back to change it. To make politics work for you.
Everyone can see the position Britain is in. Everyone knows things are not working as they should. Everyone is talking about how life is too expensive. Everyone wants less drift and more direction.
Today I answer that call.
Hope comes from honesty and we will have hope again. But first, honesty. It comes from saying the things politicians usually avoid.
I will say it straight. Britain has been on the wrong path for a long time. Deindustrialisation. Deregulation. Privatisation. Austerity. Brexit.
And what has it given us? A country run for vested interests. Not in the public interest. With power held in too few hands. And too many places left to drift.
I am ready to do things my predecessors wouldn’t. I will make a break with the direction of the past 40 years and put Britain on a new path.
Build a new economy and a new politics. That is the case I make to you today.
Conference, change will be difficult. It always is. But I know we can do it. Because we have done it before.
In 1945, we had the vision to win the peace. We had the bravery to make change. We built good homes,secure jobs, health and education for everyone. We gave Britain hope again.
We made working-class aspiration feel real for families like mine. We built the common good. Or at least we did until the 1980s.
Suddenly, the common wealth we had created, this party, the wealth we had created for the many was seen as an opportunity for the few.
Homes. Water. Energy. Transport. Care. Broken up and sold off.
The British Right talk about ‘taking back control’. Never let them forget, they are the ones that gave it away in the first place.
Economic control diminished by selling off essentials. Political control corroded by the hollowing out of councils. Immigration control weakened by Brexit.
Later this year, we will publish our plan for Britain and set out how, over 10 years, we will make this country work for you again.
More control of the basics so that we can make it more functional. More power in the hands of people and places to set their own ambitions. And from there, good growth in every postcode, hope in every heart.
Our journey starts where I started, in the Old Roan, not far from here. With housing. A home.
That home on Keeble Drive unlocked the aspiration in my mum and dad for a better life for us all and has taken us to places we could never have imagined.
With a good home, everything is possible. Without one, it feels like nothing is.
Kids can’t have a good start in life. Families can’t have good health, physical and mental health. Over a million people are in that position on housing waiting lists – almost exactly the same number as the homes we lost through Right-to-Buy in the 1980s.
I will not rest until we live in a Britain where everyone has a roof over their head every night and no one is forced to sleep rough on our streets.
On my first day in this job, on the steps of Downing Street, I set an immediate mission to end the need for rough sleeping. Everyone In. Our new permanent national policy.
Putting the right principles and standards back at the heart of this country. The care for people I got from my mum and dad at the heart of the running of the British state.
From there, the biggest council house building programme since the post-war era, led by Angela Rayner.
And I am specific about council homes because we need to restore stronger democratic control over our housing stock.
We will help councils build again and make it affordable by building on unused public land. We will reform Right-to-Buy. Not taking the right away from anyone in an existing home. But removing it from the new homes we build so they are there for generations to come.
Rebuilding our common wealth. Restoring the public housing stock to what it once was, not just by building new but acting on the private rented stock too.
Go to almost any town across Britain and you will see plenty of empty homes. We will give councils the power to take control of them and bring them back into the public housing stock.
You will see rented homes in a poor state of repair too on so many British streets. Homes which harm the health of the people inside and drag down the streets around them.
The worst of it? Often owned by absent landlords who are paid through the benefits system but refuse to reinvest anything in the upkeep of the property.
It is time to call an end to this. Landlords who rent out the worst quality homes will be given warnings to improve them. If they refuse, we will make it much easier for councils to acquire those homes and we will legislate if necessary.
We don’t let people sell food which damages health. So why allow it with homes? From now on, we won’t.
This is what I mean about taking back control with our communities.
But I also want to get back to a Britain where young people starting out are able to buy a home like my mum and dad did. Like I did.
They have had it tougher than us. Working hard, paying bills, trying to save but looking at a student loan which never gets any smaller.
Today I say to them we are bringing back the hope you can have a home of your own.
Your First Home will reduce the size of the deposit you need. It will open up home ownership to those not backed by the bank of mum and dad.
And we promise we will not forget our promises to leaseholders. We will introduce a Bill before Christmas for long overdue Leasehold Reform.
To the millions of leaseholders across the country, you have my word. The days of you being squeezed for every penny are coming to an end.
Conference, this is the break we are making with the flawed thinking of the last 40 years.
Not seeing housing only as a market with winners and losers, but as an essential everyone needs for a good life.
And the next stage of our journey is to apply that same philosophy to the most basic thing of all.
Water is a symbol of what has gone wrong with Britain. A service where the shareholders never lose and the public never win. From which some have syphoned out easy money while the public picked up the bill for the sewage in our seas.
It stinks. I will not allow it to continue like this.
Today I can confirm Angela Eagle will present a strengthened Water Bill to Parliament. The centrepiece of that Bill will be this – the repeal of Margaret Thatcher’s ideological ban on public ownership of water companies.
It will start a 10-year journey to a very different water system.
It will strengthen public control. Mayors will have new powers to hold water companies to account, with tougher consequences for those which repeatedly fail. It will close the loopholes used to pay excessive bonuses.
Where private companies serve the public interest, we will support them. But the consequences will be clear for those who do not, including taking back control or public ownership.
Conference, when people hear the phrase public control, I am sure some think it’s anti-business. It’s the opposite.
Businesses need the basics to be functional and affordable too, as does the wider economy. As someone said to me recently, there’s a reason why you can’t build all over the Water Works and the Electric Company on the Monopoly board.
One of the biggest barriers to growth in the UK is the cost of energy. British businesses and billpayers pay some of the highest energy costs in Europe.
Within 10 years, I want those costs to be in line with our neighbours.
This means reforming a broken energy market so it better serves the public interest.
We are already taking more control of our electricity prices with a massive expansion of home-grown renewables and nuclear. I have asked Miatta to speed up the breaking of the link between what we pay for power at home and the international gas market, to get bills down.
And we will be pragmatic in relation to the North Sea as we build a bridge to a clean energy future and face the climate crisis.
But it’s not just the price. The system needs to work better too. You would not believe how many businesses complain to me they can’t get going because they can’t get connected to the grid.
It pushes costs up. It drags growth down. And it holds Britain back. We won’t get the growth and inward investment we need if we don’t fix it.
So, for the first time, we will have a national energy plan and we will bring back local democratic control through a stronger role for mayors and local leaders.
But we must go further. Today I can announce our plan for Great British Grid. A new branch of Great British Energy. A publicly-owned company that will challenge the private sector operators.
It will increase competition, drive down costs and speed up connections so businesses can expand and grow more quickly.
Energy, water, housing. Back under stronger public control. We rely on them, we pay for them and once again we will have power over them.
I realise people can’t wait forever for change though. They need breathing space now. And I am determined to provide it.
I can say to everyone watching, you will see VAT disappear off your electricity bill this Thursday. I didn’t expect a standing ovation for that but I’ll take it. Thank you, Conference!
From January, you will be able to travel for the whole of 2027 anywhere in England paying no more than £2 fora single bus journey. You knew I wouldn’t get through a conference speech without mentioning buses, didn’t you?
These things are not everything but I hope you will see it as a sign, a strong one, of our intent to get your bills and fares down as you wait for the bigger changes to come.
I would love to go quicker. But I have to be honest about what the country can afford. I will stick to our fiscal rules to get borrowing and debt down.
The approach I am outlining today is the responsible one. If we build a generation of council homes, we will save billions from the housing benefit budget over the decade.
If we get energy bills down, we will better control inflation and support the economy.
If we change the way we support people, we will get more people into work and the welfare bill down.
Not through crude cuts. That should never be the Labour way.
But by investing in people in their success, supporting them to get where they want to be, rather than paying for failure as the country does now.
Our plan for public control is a plan for growth, growth of people, places and businesses.
The truth is this. When we gave up public control, we left people exposed. Just when it was getting harder to grow up and harder to grow old.
Support has been cut away from young and old. And that leaves the country paying for failure on a grand scale.
Almost a million young people not working or learning. Thousands of older people stuck in hospital because of the lack of good home care.
We can’t afford to carry on like this.
In 1945 we had the Beveridge Report. We need something similar now. A new social contract for the 21st century.
You know of my long-held ambitions to reform social care. When I was a new MP in the early 2000s, I despaired at what I saw when my gran Kitty went through the system.
I winced at the pain it caused my mum. My gran’s engagement ring ripped from her finger and stolen in a care home. Care not worthy of the name.
And the modest savings she had built up through her life, starting from the house where I was born? All taken to pay for it.
I vowed then to fight for something better for my parents’ generation. And here we are 25 years later. If anything, it’s worse today than it was then.
What an indictment of my generation of politicians, myself included. Too cowardly to fix something as basic as the care we give to each other.
Is it any wonder people are giving up on politics?
I watched closely the people who looked after my dad. Caring for other people’s parents on poverty pay, but doing it with huge skill, humour and humanity.
Holding a threadbare system somehow together.
Yet invisible to the political class of this country.
I want to speak directly today to our care workers.
You are not invisible to me.
I see you.
I thank you.
And I am sorry that my profession has let down yours for so long.
I promise you: I won’t leave this job without doing everything I can to change things for you.
And I say the same to our wonderful NHS staff.
We have let you down too.
Left you under intolerable pressure.
At risk of burn-out.
Dealing with 999 calls from a failing care system.
Corridor care your daily reality.
If we carry on like this, Conference, broken social care will break the NHS too.
And we can’t let that happen, we must never let that happen, this party that founded the National Health Service.
There is only one real answer.
A person-centred, high-quality care service that starts in the home.
A system in the best traditions of this party, where everyone contributes and everyone is covered.
Free at the point of use and no care charges paid out of your basic state pension.
Care that is about people not profit.
Which gives peace of mind over care needs in later life.
Which protects people’s homes and their savings.
And gives proper recognition to the care workers we will all need to rely on at some point in our lives.
Conference, this is the National Care Service we will build.
We will, we will. Thank you, Conference.
We’re going to do it. We are going to do it.
A landmark policy as significant as the creation of the NHS itself.
And utterly essential to securing its future.
NHS savings from fewer ambulance call-outs, A&E admissions and vulnerable people being stuck unnecessarily in hospital.
We will start laying the ground now for the National Care Service and introduce it in the next Parliament.
Louise Casey’s review will advise us on exactly how and Yvette and I will seek to build the maximum national consensus around her recommendations.
It will be fully funded, and not through borrowing.
Conference, I won’t pretend some of this won’t be difficult.
I accept I may pay a political price.
But someone has to go through the pain barrier and rip the plaster off.
It’s the leadership I promised you when I asked to be your leader and I will do it.
But I’ll be honest as well.
We promised in our manifesto to keep the Triple Lock unchanged throughout this Parliament.
I will honour that promise.
I will honour that promise, and I will do more.
That promise will take the state pension to a record high.
From there, in April 2030, we will adjust it.
The state pension will continue to rise every year at least by prices or 2.5%.
And it will hold its value relative to earnings over time so that pensioners will always share in the rising prosperity of the nation.
But this change will generate significant savings which we will use to build up our National Care Service.
Some may not realise it but older people with nothing more than the state pension, or only a little more, can find themselves paying care charges today from that small income.
Under my plan, this will no longer happen.
I can also confirm today our commitment to ensure that the low-income pensioners won’t be dragged into paying income tax in this Parliament.
So this is the deal.
A state pension that rises every year.
No care charges.
And a high-quality National Care Service to give peace of mind in later life.
Conference, I am going to go out and argue for that.
A good deal for our pensioners and for older people in the 21st century.
And I will do it in memory of my dad and out of complete respect for everyone who cared for him.
Conference, we will need to show the same boldness for our young people too.
Just when growing up got harder in the social media age, their support was stripped away.
Youth services practically abolished in the 2010s.
Children’s mental health services cut.
Families left to battle for support for kids with special educational needs and disabilities.
So many young people cast adrift by a school system built for some, not all, overly focused on the university route and not enough on technical education.
Should we be really surprised that the numbers of late teens and early 20s on benefits has grown?
Conference, it’s not their fault. It’s ours.
Politicians fail to give people, young people, the support they need as they grow up in a tougher world and then threaten them in their 20s that they will strip away what they’re left with.
How is that fair? How does that build a strong society?
We have a choice, Conference.
Either we invest in our young people.
Or we pay for failure through the benefits system.
Truthfully, we can’t afford to do both.
My choice is to invest in them.
We can’t retake control of the country’s future if we leave so many of our young people drifting towards it.
We await the final report from Alan Milburn’s review.
But I can say now we will change the education system and the welfare system.
We will rebuild a system of comprehensive education in this country with parity between academic and technical, with Lucy Powell leading the way.
Good quality pathways for all from 14.
And the right support for our young people when they need it.
A 45-day work placement between 16 and 18.
An apprenticeship at 18.
And no long waits anymore for mental health support growing up.
We will need a fundamental rethink of the welfare system to find the money for these opportunities upfront.
And we will require young people to take up the help presented to them – guaranteeing in-work support and not leaving those out of work losing confidence and connection.
This is a different approach to welfare.
It is based on a philosophy of social security.
A country which invests in people’s success, rather than abandoning them and paying for failure, will be much more resilient to the shocks we will undoubtedly face in the rest of this century.
And more able to meet its NATO obligations on defence.
This leadership we are showing at home will be matched on the international stage.
I will be steadfast in my support for Ukraine and stand up to threats wherever they come from. Whether Russia, Iran or anywhere.
And Conference, we will be principled in our leadership in securing a two-state solution between Israel and Palestine, as Ed Miliband has shown.
This is the Labour way. A plan for Britain that will enhance our social security and our national security.
You don’t make Britain safer by leaving a younger generation without hope stuck at home looking at screens.
You do it by giving young people hope again.
And you do it by getting our economy growing strongly again.
I know Britain is full of brilliant businesses who want our young people to succeed and want to employ them.
And we will help them do that and grow together.
I have a theory of growth.
It starts by retaking control of the essentials that make a place work or not.
You’ve got to have that control over the fundamental things that everybody needs.
And from there you devolve more power to places to put them in charge and decide their own destiny.
And then in doing those things we optimise the conditions for businesses to grow.
And make sure we support our people so they are there for our business to employ.
Conference, I developed this approach over a decade leading the country’s fastest-growing city region.
And I could not have been more proud to hand over to Bev Craig as the new Mayor of Greater Manchester.
It’s like the other way round from when Alex Ferguson handed over to David Moyes, I think this is David Moyes handing over to Alex Ferguson.
We have a theory of growth, and we built it with Steve too when we left Westminster together, and with the other mayors who are with us today.
And you can see the change, you can feel it in this city, can’t you.
Amazing isn’t it, to be here, to see it every year, because we come back every year.
We see the change every year, and how good is that to see.
And we want it everywhere, don’t we, every place represented in this conference hall here today.
And that’s what I intend to do.
I intend to take what I did in Manchester, our plan for good growth, and drive it from the very centre of Government into every postcode in Britain.
Number 10 North, in lockstep with John and the Treasury, overseeing the rewiring of the British state, the rebuilding of resilience in our communities and the re-industrialisation of our regions.
Changing government procurement so that it backs British business, as our trade unions have rightly pushed us to do.
And that will require culture change in Whitehall.
The Mayor of the Liverpool City Region should not have had to fight Whitehall as hard as he did to get a new ferry built on the banks of the River Mersey.
And what a job he is doing.
Liverpool growing faster than the UK economy.
How often have we been able to say that in our lifetimes? What a brilliant thing to be able to say.
Places written off by the powers-that-be in the past now proving them wrong.
Bringing big names in AI like Kyndryl into the city.
I see huge potential for more of this in every part of Britain.
I see start-ups and scale-ups pouring out of our world-class universities.
I see businesses up and down the country playing their part and ready to do more.
As Gordon Brown has said, we can be the world’s innovation nation, and he’s right, we can.
A nation trusted by others to be a global leader in AI, an honest broker
When Britain takes the Presidency of the G20 next year, I will show our new-found confidence as a country, and I will show it to the world by putting AI centre stage and Britain will then work to develop a new global code to capture its benefits whilst being clear-eyed about its risks.
Just as Gordon did in the financial crisis in 2008, so Britain will do it again, step forward, and bring people together around what’s right for the future.
Securing our prosperity, but also our safety, and particularly the safety of our young people.
We led the world first’s industrial revolution from the Midlands and the North of England.
So why can’t we lead the next?
We can, Conference.
And we will.
We are a country full of working-class aspiration.
And we will be the Government that unlocks it.
Conference, there is one final thing we need to change if our plan for Britain is to succeed.
Our politics.
Westminster prizes point-scoring over problem-solving.
And that is why so many things go unfixed for so long.
If we want to change Britain, we need to change ourselves.
I will work as hard as I can to get as much cross-party support for our plan for Britain.
If we can secure that, it will project a message of confidence and stability to markets and the world about Britain’s future direction.
It is why I decided to make this a very different conference speech.
We can’t succeed in the eyes of the world if we continue with the levels of political turbulence we have seen in recent times.
It is always in my mind that I’m the seventh Prime Minister in ten years.
t is why I want to underpin our plan for Britain with a new politics.
We will all have failed in our public duties if we carry on as we are and open the door of Number 10 to a divisive government on less than 30% of the vote.
Conference, in past years you have voted twice to support electoral reform.
I hear you, I agree with you and today I am announcing a new national commission on electoral reform.
I invite all the political parties to be part of its work.
We will contest the next election with a manifesto commitment to change the electoral system so that everyone’s vote counts and everyone’s voice is heard.
As you can see, what I am outlining is a more serious and thought-through prospectus for the future of Britain than people have been offered in a generation.
I appreciate some of it is difficult.
I accept people, including in this hall, will not agree with every part of it.
But I believe this is what we need, small things will not get us through what are difficult times.
We need to be bigger and to have the courage of our convictions.
I believe we can turn Britain around, but it requires us to think bigger about what we need to do.
I will try my best to find common ground.
But let me be clear.
Where I can’t agree with others, I will fight hard for what I believe to be right and what I believe to be in the best interests of this country.
On the day my dad died, the Scottish First Minister said I would be the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
I quote that not to seek sympathy.
Nor to criticise John Swinney, I don’t think he knew the news at the time.
And anyway, my dad Roy would have been the first to defend his right to say it.
I relay it because I want you to know how it made me feel.
Utterly determined to prove him wrong.
Whatever its flaws, this country gave my dad a good life.
And it has given his sons opportunities he didn’t get for himself.
He recognised that and was grateful for it.
And so proud of what Nick, John and I did with them.
If only, if only he had been able to appreciate that moment of the family in Downing Street.
The son of a man who failed his 11-plus becoming Prime Minister.
The fact it could even happen in this country would not have been lost on him.
He could have gone to university himself, but times were different then so it wasn’t an option.
But he voted every time, religiously for the Labour governments which changed education so his sons could do that.
The United Kingdom my dad represented is the one I believe in.
A union of nations that gave trade unions and the cooperative movement to the world.
The National Health Service.
A country that stood up to fascism.
A country of solidarity not separation.
That’s the Britain my dad represented.
Britain is not perfect. It can be better and we will make it so.
But it still stands for something worth saving, worth fighting for.
And we will always be stronger facing a changing world together, rather than separating.
So I am going to use this job to build the kind of Britain my dad wanted to see – and fight with everything I’ve got to keep it together.
Not the last Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
Rather the first to rewire it to make it work for all people and places.
Driving power out of Whitehall and into every postcode of Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and England and closing divides between people and places.
The first Prime Minister to make a break with politics-as-usual.
I believe the plan I have outlined today will not just hold us together, it will allow us to rise again.
Britain to rise again.
And we will be a Britain again confident of our place in the world.
It has changed dramatically since 2016.
And, in the spirit of this speech, we have to be honest.
Brexit hasn’t given us control.
We’ve lost some of the control we had over our economy, as a decade of low growth has put us in a weaker position.
And we’ve lost some of our control over immigration.
At its most fundamental level, this is a debate about fairness.
So I understand the anger about what is happening in the Channel.
Shabana has done a great job in beginning to restore our grip over the system.
People arriving on small boats down 40% on the last year, 50% from the early 2020s.
Net migration down more than 80% since the peak of the Boris Johnson era.
Conference, we make these changes but we will always grateful – always, and we thank them – to those whose who have come here and are contributing to our country.
Than you, to them.
But control over immigration was weakened when we lost collaboration with our European partners.
And we are still having to work hard to bring it back.
Later this year, there will be a UK-EU summit where one of the issues on the agenda will be how we best work together on immigration.
And beyond that we will work to secure gains for our industries most harmed by Brexit.
Conference, these are important concrete steps.
But they are not enough.
I say this to you and the country.
We will not give Britain the clear path we need into the rest of the century until we decide on a long-term relationship with what is still our largest market.
I cannot say to you truthfully that where we are is good enough.
Brexit has done more harm than good.
We need to restore a higher level of growth and prosperity for Britain.
So, I will take the opportunity around the summit to lay out to you, to lay out to the country, what I believe the different options are for Britain’s long-term relationship with our European partners.
And there are different options.
And I will see if we can find consensus around one which will give us clarity about our position, and the future of the continent we live in.
Well, Conference, I did warn you this speech would be different, didn’t I?
But I think this moment in our country’s history requires it.
1945.
1964.
1997.
Now.
All moments of Labour governments.
All moments which saw Britain rediscover a sense of hope.
When I walked up Downing Street on my first day in the job, I promised to give Britain a circuit breaker.
To get us out of the rut we’ve been in.
To get us believing again.
I say to this to everyone watching at home.
You may disagree with some or all of what I have said today.
But I have given you what you often say is missing from politics.
Honesty, ideas and a clear direction for the country we all love.
I now want to make a direct appeal to you.
If you agree with enough of what I have said, get behind this plan.
And get behind each other.
It’s time to draw a line.
To move beyond a decade of drift and division.
To bring a spirit of unity and positivity back to our country.
To unlock the working-class aspiration that is still there in every postcode in this great land.
All Together Now.
We can do it.
We will believe again.
We will hope again.
Thank you, Conference.
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