News, views and top stories in your inbox. Don't miss our must-read newsletter Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

Apart from a few mentions in the Mirror you most probably won’t have heard of me. That’s because, to be frank, for the last 14 years I have been in the political wilderness.

Why? Because although I am a Labour MP I refused to support many of the disastrous New Labour policies that lost us so many of our supporters.

Unlike the other main leadership candidates, I voted against the war in Iraq, opposed the privatisation of our public services and refused to vote for the waste of money on madcap schemes like ID cards and Trident.

You won’t have seen me on celebrity TV chat shows apart from some appearances on the news because I believe the job of a hard-working MP should be a full-time job with no time for pursuing earnings in the media.

I am what most Mirror readers expect Labour MPs to be. I am not Old Labour or New Labour or Next Labour. I am just Labour.

I am standing for leader of the party because I want people to know that Labour is coming home.

I want people to know that lessons have been learnt and never again will we let them down by trying to be a pale version of the Tories as some of the New Labour policies were.

Don’t get me wrong: over the last 13 years of course we have done some good things but the reality is that we lost touch with our own people. That is why mistakes were made that lost us the election.

Public service workers saw their jobs privatised or were put under the cosh of targets and league tables.

Families have been put under real pressure with people working long hours to afford a roof over their heads. Homelessness grew because New Labour refused to build the homes we needed.

Young people have become saddled with massive debts from tuition fees. Two million pensioners and children still live in poverty.

How can it be that after 13 years of a Labour government we now live in a society more unequal than at any time since the Second World War?

Now the Tories are demanding huge cuts in our public services because they want us to pay for the economic crisis caused by greedy bankers in the City and government ministers, who turned a blind eye.

Bankers are still being paid massive bonuses whilst we are expected to see jobs and services cut in our schools, hospitals and local councils and vital services like the Royal Mail privatised. Watch out because they will soon be coming for your pensions, wages and benefits.

We need a Labour leader who says to the bankers and their Tory friends that we are not paying for your crisis.

The budget deficit can be sorted if we set up a fair tax system which tackles the tax avoidance by the big companies and the very rich that costs us £100billion a year. We need a Robin Hood tax on speculators’ deals in the City.

We are the fifth richest country in the world. That is why if we introduce a fair tax system and cut out wasteful expenditure on ID cards, Trident and the war in Afghanistan, we can afford a decent pension for everyone, child benefits that cover the real cost of bringing up a child and a care service for our elderly that doesn’t force them to sell their homes.

We can lift the debt off our

youngsters by abolishing tuition fees, build the affordable homes we need and bring in a minimum wage that is a living wage.

We can also invest in rebuilding our economy with large-scale investment in our manufacturing industries, especially in the jobs needed to make our country the greenest and most sustainable in the world. Some will try and blame immigrants or asylum seekers for our problems.

Shortages of jobs and houses are not due to migrants but the mismanagement of our economy and our housing market.

The reality is that people coming here to work contribute much more to our economy than they take out, just as British people working abroad do. Also we should be proud of this country’s record of giving refuge to people whose lives were at risk in their homelands. I need 33 Labour MPs to nominate me to stand in this leadership election.

This is a big ask for a backbencher but you can help me achieve this. Contact your nearest Labour MPs to ask them to nominate me.

Even if they don’t agree with me they should at least nominate me so that my voice can be heard in this election.

That’s just democracy, which is what Labour stands for, isn’t it?

