On Friday you can wake up to either a Tory government ready to sell out our NHS to Donald Trump, or a Labour government that will protect it and invest in it.
The choice is clear. Only Labour or the Tories can win this election – and Labour has a truly different vision for the way our country is run.
Across Scotland, vital public services are on the brink of collapse because of a lack of investment. In communities where poverty and inequality have taken a huge toll on people’s health, I hear again and again of the struggle to get GP appointments for weeks on end.
Scotland has seen the loss of proud workplaces such as Glasgow’s Caley railway works, once the jewel in the crown of our locomotive-building powerhouse, and the BiFab engineering yards in Fife.
Despite a £2.6 billion wind farm being built just off the Fife coast, this skilled workforce in the green economy has been left fighting for crumbs from the table – with the lion’s share of the work going to firms abroad.
But in Scotland I also meet people who are coming together to fight back – to fight for their communities and their workplaces, and for a better society.
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Last month, I met with young workers at the Glasgow School of Art, who, employed on zero-hour contracts, their management has left them without any shifts at all – but they have come together in a trade union to demand that they be reinstated on fixed hours.
And in October, I met students at Strathclyde University. In 2016, a student there, Lord Apetsi, was detained for deportation by border forces. Strathclyde students who came together and campaigned against a student’s Lord Apesti’s deportation – and won.
These inspiring events will come as no surprise to anyone who knows Scotland – because its history is one steeped in solidarity.
From the rent strike led by Mary Barbour in 1915, to the workers at Rolls-Royce in East Kilbride who refused to work on parts for the Chilean Air Force after Augusto Pinochet’s bloody coup in 1973, and the train drivers on the West Highland Line who stopped the transportation of Iraq war munitions in its tracks – Scotland’s politics has always been about way more than the politicians.
Scotland had seen 40 years of successive governments too hesitant to challenge rising inequality caused by an economic model which only worked for the very wealthiest.
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From 1997, Labour had made powerful strides in government, not least the creation of the Scottish Parliament. And it was this Parliament which led the way in progressive reform for the next decade, delivering free personal care, legislating for the repeal of Section 28 and a ban on smoking before the rest of the UK.
But we must face up to the reality that some within our ranks took Scottish voters for granted, and did not meet Scotland’s appetite for real change.
Five years on from the referendum, Nicola Sturgeon is adamant that the simplistic solution to Scotland’s challenges is another referendum. But the SNP’s vision for independence is not one of real change, in fact it represents no change at all to the way our economy is run.
In government, the SNP has put rhetoric before real change. Schools and hospitals have not been sufficiently resourced to meet the targets set for them by SNP ministers.
The SNP’s Growth Commission, published last year, committed to separation on a basis that would require another decade of public spending cuts.
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Only in October, Sturgeon’s MSPs voted with the Tories against ending the failed private ScotRail franchise, which Labour had proposed in a vote at Holyrood.
So at this election, the only prospect for real change – not just in raising living standards, but in shifting wealth and power from the few to the many, and reviving the collective fabric of Scotland’s society – is with Labour. If you want real change, vote for A UK Labour government which will start transforming Scotland from this Friday.
Labour will invest £100 billion in Scotland’s economy and public services over the next decade. We will deliver a £10 an hour Real Living Wage for all, scrapping the discriminatory youth rates.
We would build 120,000 council and social homes, and transform our social care for both workers and care users with £600 million of extra funds every year.
On Thursday you can vote for a new society, where no one is left behind. If you believe that Scotland’s future should be one of economic empowerment – and not continuing injustice – then vote Labour on Thursday.
All is still to play for – and change is coming.
Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition.
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