Angela Rayner speech in full as she provides scathing verdict on Burnham ruling

In a speech at the Communication Workers Union (CWU) conference, Angela Rayner said Labour must deliver and words are not enough as she blasted the decision to block Andy Burnham’s return

It’s a privilege to be among friends, united in our commitment to a fairer future for our country.

I pay tribute to every rep and activist working towards that goal. It has been a bruising few days. But no matter what is happening on our TV screens, or 100 miles up the road in Westminster, you have always been a powerful advocate for workers’ rights.

Conference, this is not an easy moment. Our party has suffered a historic defeat. Many good Labour colleagues have lost their seats. People who gave everything for the communities they represented.

It is clear that what we are doing isn’t working and it needs to change. As activists across the country heard on the doorstep, the cost of living is the top issue for voters of all parties.

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People have turned to populists and nationalists because we have not done enough to fix it.

Living standards are barely higher than they were a decade and a half ago. People feel hopeless that the cost of living crisis will never end, and now they see oil and gas companies using global instability to post record profits.

Once again, working class people are paying the price for decisions they didn’t make. It’s no wonder that across the UK, working people feel the system is rigged against them.

The Labour Party must now live up to our name. We must be the party of working people.

The Prime Minister today acknowledged the frustration that was expressed last week. But we will be judged on actions, not just our words. I’m proud of our Labour values but they are not enough if we do not have a plan to put them into practice.

It is no good acknowledging the mistakes if they are not put right. So let me be honest, Conference – we as a party have to do better than this.

We can only prove we mean our Labour values by putting the common interest ahead of factionalism.

We can start by accepting that Andy Burnham should never have been blocked. That is a mistake that the leadership of our party could and should be put right.

We have to show that we understand the scale of response the moment calls for. By rejecting factionalism, uniting our movement, apologising for our mistakes but learning from our successes.

Conference, we must make politics work for ordinary people. With an economic agenda to make people better off, change how we run our party and how we do politics.

Labour exists to make working people better off. That is not happening fast enough; And that needs to change now.

The trade union movement taught me that if you have strong values, if you work collectively, you can get things done, no matter what you are up against.

Conference, our union movement, and the Labour Party, is not just a political alliance. It is a family.

And in families, you have your ups and downs and we have our scrapes. We look out for each other. And in the end, we are always there for each other.

It was the Tories who wrote me off and said that kids like me were getting pregnant to get a council house. That wasn’t what was on my mind when I was young. I was scared, I was frightened, and I was looking for an opportunity.

It is thanks to my union family that I was able to improve my life – and the lives of my fellow workers who I represented as a trade unionist.

Our Labour family, our union family gave me those opportunities. You were there for me and proved that kids like me deserved better than that.

I wouldn’t be standing in front of you today if it wasn’t for our movement. I may have been born in Stockport, but I was raised in the trade union movement.

It was our union family that gave us the New Deal For Working People. It wasn’t created in an ivory tower by politicians.

It was developed in collaboration with you; the trade union movement. And it will be delivered with you.

Let me say this. There is no way we would have had that New Deal, nor our Employment Rights Act, nor the rest of our plan to Make Work Pay, without the affiliation of unions like the CWU to the Labour Party.

It is a testament to the strength and importance of the link. But I know families also have disagreements. Our Labour family is no different. And it is right that we are honest about them.

I know you will always push us to do more and be better. We won’t always agree about every dot and comma.

But I don’t need to be persuaded that tweaks won’t fix the fundamental challenges facing our country.

This government needs, at pace, to put measures in place that make people’s lives better. We need to fix the foundations of a system rigged against them.

Because we know that things can be so much better than this. Spain and Canada have shown that economies can grow, and people can thrive when governments stay true to their values and put people first.

We need to learn from that. In London, we lost young people who fear they will never afford a home.

In my patch and across the north, we lost working people whose wages are too low and costs too high.

In Scotland and Wales, people do not currently see Labour as the answer.

For too long, governments have allowed wealth and power to concentrate at the top without a plan to ensure the benefits of economic growth are shared fairly.

The result is an economy that does not work for the majority, with wealth concentrated in too few hands.

This level of inequality, alongside squeezed living standards, is the outcome of a model built on deregulation, privatisation, and trickle-down economics.

But we have the chance to fix this. We need immediate action to cut costs for households and put money back into the everyday economy.

We can do it within the current fiscal rules, by making sure that those who benefit from the crisis contribute more so that everyone can thrive.

Our Employment Rights Act was just the first step in our plan to Make Work Pay. Now is the time to take the next steps, starting with a Fair Pay Agreement in social care – but not ending there.

A plan to get young people into work. Good jobs that pay decent wages.

As we have seen last week, we are up against another party claiming to be for the working class.

When I was introducing our Employment Rights Act, we gave millions of workers; a pay rise; protections from unfair dismissal. An end to exploitative zero hours contracts.

None of that would have happened without this union and its link to the Labour Party. But Reform voted against it every time.

And by the way, the Greens often stood in our way too. Populists and nationalists are not parties for the working class.

It is only Labour that can protect you at work, rebuild our estates, make sure that we have the council homes we need, end no-fault evictions, bring down waiting lists, and feed our kids.

We’ve had snake oil salesmen before. And we know we can see them off if we stand and fight for our values.

Our Labour values. Of equality, social justice and fairness.

To get people to follow us, and make this country better… The late John Prescott used to tell me, “you’ve got a voice kid, use it”.

A union man to his core, John would have relished this fight. It’s a fight that you are all part of.

He had the courage to set out his stall, and persuaded people to follow it.

He would be fighting back. For what he believed in. A bold vision for a better country.

We have to do exactly that. In each generation it has fallen to a Labour Government to strengthen the hand of working people.

The task of this generation is to do that again. To fight back for the soul of this country.

We can only do that with our union family, our Labour family fighting for the same cause.

Let’s do it together.