POLITICS changed three weeks ago when Liz Truss was elected as the new leader of the Tory Party and Prime Minister — and not for the better. That much is evident in her budget unashamedly for the rich.

Her agenda is openly hostile to working people and those most in need. Not since George Osborne introduced his budget of austerity in 2015 have the Tories so clearly shown how they know the price of everything but the value of nothing.

Today the legacy of a decade of Tory cuts can be seen across our country. The only area of growth today is poverty — the government and its policies are creating more poor people by the day.

Over two million people now have to rely on food banks to put a meal on the table. Eight million people are in in-work poverty, nearly seven million people skipping meals to stay afloat, five million families unable to put the heating on this winter and more than eight million people in England are living in an unaffordable, or unsuitable home — life for millions is a living misery.

Behind each statistic lies the face of a nurse, a teacher, bus driver or care worker. Behind many of them is a child whose life under the Tories is a sentence of hopelessness where love can be no replacement for heat, food or clothes.  

Each number represents individuals and families being pushed to a level of hardship and suffering not seen for generations.

Yet despite all this evidence of the scale of poverty and the reduction in living standards, Truss’s solution is a double dose of the same medicine.

Her prescription of trickle-down economics will see those making eye-watering profits receiving a tax cut, while those in most need have their safety nets dismantled thread by thread.

Our new Conservative government’s first budget announcements set out tax cuts for the rich, sky-high bonuses for bankers and give £150 billion to energy companies while attacking part-time workers, reducing benefits for the most vulnerable and reducing stamp duty — which always leads to higher house prices.

The budget did nothing for communities living in misery. Expecting people to be grateful that energy bills are not quadrupling when they have already doubled, Truss says the already higher energy bills are “a price worth paying” — but as always, it’s the poorest left to pay the costs.

It’s time to scream “enough is enough” from every street corner in the country — and thankfully our trade unions and civil society groups are doing just that.

Over recent weeks they have been the voices making the case against the government’s plans. Their demands are popular — bring those services that we rely on into public ownership. Two thirds of the country, including Tory voters, want us to bring the utilities back into public ownership.

Those saying “enough is enough” by taking industrial action to protect their jobs and living standards have the support of the majority of the country, despite the disruption it may cause them.  

Hundreds of thousands of people have signed up to the Don’t Pay campaign — many because they can’t pay. People are desperate for help and desperate for hope.

People need to believe that there is a way out of the poverty and misery they are currently facing. Collectivising these fights for communities and workers is exactly what is needed in the face of Tory ideological warfare attacks.

Despite the overwhelming groundswell of support, there is one organisation that has been missing in action in the war against poverty — the Labour Party. The party, whose DNA can be traced back to the trade union movement, whose values and principles are founded in the fight for economic and social justice, has been silent.

Rather than aiming their fire on those responsible for the cost-of-living crisis, the leadership of the party seems to have put those of us prepared to show our support to those who need it into their disciplinary cross-hairs in an attempt to silence us.

I’m not sure if these attacks on good solid Labour MPs, members and activists comes from the focus groups they seem to conduct regularly, or whether they simply don’t understand the scale of the plight the people of this country are facing.

What I do know is when I’m told I should stop talking the country down, I say I would be betraying my country and what it stands for if I didn’t stand side by side with those who need us, the millions in food poverty, in heating poverty, in a spiral of debt they can see no escape from.

We have a duty to speak truth to power and use our position to point out the realities in our communities, but we must also articulate how Labour would deliver change and a better society.

The Labour Party exists to transform Britain, so we should be clear in how we will fix the problems in society that the Tories have caused, to reunite communities, to invest in public services, to tackle the cost-of-living crisis and invest in people not big business.

What is the point of a Labour government that doesn’t want to change society for the better? In opposition Labour must fight for change, in government Labour must deliver a transformed society.

We can win if we are clear where we stand, when voters can see we’re honest and don’t try to become a lighter, better-presented version of the Tories. Voters want from Labour a vision of transformation of their lives, not triangulated focus-group message testing that makes us look opaque and shifty.

We have to be clear on the NHS: we have to say that only Labour will save the NHS. We must now commit to restoring the NHS to a service free from private providers cherry-picking services for profit.

Labour must tackle cronyism and big business and demand more for our communities. These are not radical ideas — a basic right to food, affordable council housing, workers’ rights, human rights, equalities and public ownership.

We need a bold Labour opposition that takes the fight to Truss, that speaks up for workers and communities and that does not give an inch to arguments about borrowing and debt when these Tories have grown British public debt at the end of August 2022 to £2,427.5bn — more than all previous Labour governments combined.

It is the Tories that cannot be trusted with our economy, the Tories that cannot be trusted with our public health, the Tories that cannot be trusted to look after communities and the Tories that cannot be trusted with money.

This Labour Party conference I hope that we see signs that we will start standing with workers and communities — if we do not, it is Labour that will be left behind.

Kate Osborne is the Labour MP for Jarrow.