Angela Eagle MP, Chair of Labour’s National Executive Committee, in a speech to Labour’s Annual Conference 2014 in Manchester, said:

It gives me great pleasure to welcome you all to this crucial Labour conference.

As we gather here in Manchester we are gearing up to fight the most important general election we will face in a generation and we meet just a few days after Scotland’s decision to remain part of the UK.

Conference, let’s take this opportunity to show our appreciation to everyone who campaigned to keep our country together. Along with many of you in this hall I have been in Scotland campaigning.

I met people working hard but struggling to get by as prices soar while wages stagnate.

I met young people who were despairing about ever finding a job, and pensioners worried about the future of our NHS.

I met many who have just lost faith in politics and it struck me just how much they had in common with the people in my constituency of Wallasey.
They are worried about exactly the same things.

They face the same challenges and express the same frustrations.
They too have voted Labour and got a Tory Government.

They too are enraged that they were told ‘we’re all in it together’ when they see the reality is anything but, and they too worry about what the future holds and think that ‘politics as usual’ is just not good enough anymore.

Conference, as the leader of the only truly national party, Ed Miliband knows that too.

Whether it’s in Scotland or the rest of the UK, we in this Party understand fundamental change is needed and now the siren voices of nationalism have been defeated, real and meaningful change is on its way.

Conference, now is the time for the country to come together, not to defend the status quo in the way our politics is done or the way our economy is run, but to build a better Britain where everybody has a stake and a say.

Now we’ve kept our country together, we need to change our country together.

Not the partisan, petty games of a Prime Minister on the run from UKIP, who thinks he can exploit the very same divisions we’ve just defeated in Scotland; but keeping our word to the Scottish people and delivering a fairer constitutional settlement for all of the UK too.

That’s why Ed Miliband has announced a constitutional convention. A considered, detailed process to deliver the change this country needs.
Conference, in just 8 months we will have the chance to make David Cameron a one term Prime Minister.

Before the last election he went out of his way to tell us that his Tories were a new breed. He said they were 'compassionate conservatives’. He claimed to care about the poor and the vulnerable. He said he’d cut the deficit and not the NHS, but four years later and we know the opposite is true.

Compassionate conservatives? Who is Cameron trying to kid. Food banks have multiplied and people in our country are going hungry. People are working all hours and still struggling to survive and parents are looking at their children and worrying about their future.

Conference, this isn’t a government of compassionate Conservatives. This is the same old nasty party.

We know times are hard. We know that savings have to be made. But just look at the way the Tories have chosen to do it; tax cuts for millionaires and a pay cut for everyone else.

The poorest local authorities like Manchester have suffered cuts of nearly £750 per household while the most prosperous like Surrey Heath have had a £25 increase, and the pay of top executives is now one hundred and thirty times the wages of the average employee.

Conference, after four years, all this Government has delivered is an economy that benefits just a privileged few at the top. They don’t want this to change because it suits them to look after their chums and their financial backers.

They just aren’t like the rest of us are they? Their summer fundraiser last year was attended by six billionaires, seventy three city financiers, the owner of a strip club and the judo partner of Vladimir Putin.

Now that’s a pretty run of the mill guest list you might think. Until you check out the results of the raffle at this year’s event. A bottle of Champagne went for £45,000. A really rather ordinary pot of honey sold for £30,000. And the wife of an ex Russian Minister paid £160,000 to have a game of tennis with David Cameron and Boris Johnson.

I can’t believe she thought that those two would be much of a doubles team.

The Tories didn’t have a good summer though did they, Conference? Baroness Warsi resigned. Douglas Carswell defected to UKIP. Nine of the 2010 intake of Tory MPs have already announced they’re abandoning the sinking ship and meanwhile our Prime Minister was chillaxing in Cornwall, pretending to be in Baywatch. Though with him conference, it’s less the Hoff and more like the Toff.

Conference, it has been an honour and a privilege to Chair the NEC this year. To follow in the footsteps of some of my personal heroines. Women like Barbara Castle, Ellen Wilkinson and Jennie Lee. Women who forged our NHS; who built the welfare state; who wrote that 1945 manifesto that won the first majority Labour government.

But let’s remember conference, we are on the verge of making history ourselves. Together, in eight months time, Ed Miliband is going to become the Prime Minister who will turn our country around.

We can rebuild our broken politics. We can make our economy work for everyone and not just a few at the top.

Conference, the Tories can give tax cuts to millionaires, but after May we are going to tackle the scourge of low pay.

They can run down and privatise our NHS, but after May we are going to rebuild it bit by bit. They can close our politics down, but we are going to open it up. They can force people to food banks, but we won’t stand by as people go hungry in our country.

Conference, we know there is a better way. A fairer way. A Labour way. It is going to take all of our energy, our passion, and our strength. But in May we are going to win this election. So let’s get to it.

Ends