Fighting for what really matters...

Foreword to The Scottish Labour Party Manifesto 2011

We pursue growth, more jobs and more businesses, for a reason. We do so because work, labour itself, is the best chance of a better life for all, and work remains the only real route out of poverty.

The chance of a good life should be our birthright rather than an accident of our birth. Poverty envelops too many too early and remains too common and too persistent to be tolerated in a country that dreams of a better future.

In the 1980s I taught in a secondary school in Edinburgh. I saw teenagers lose their future and their hopes to the spectre of unemployment and to a government that did not care.

That is why I am standing to be First Minister of Scotland, so that this Tory government cannot repeat the mistakes of yesterday and blight all of our tomorrows. The difference today is our own Scottish Parliament. We can take a different path.

The great achievements of our past can be an inspiration for our future. We can create powerful new industries driving towards a green economy that creates the jobs we need to generate prosperity for all. I make no apologies for the scale of my ambition for Scotland.

It is the job of leaders to look to the horizon. My choices will be set by these priorities: creating jobs for all and leaving nobody behind.
The vision that guides me is a Scotland of full employment; a more equal Scotland, with the freedom to give full expression to who we feel we are. This is how we begin - ending youth unemployment by investing in education and skills, in apprenticeships and jobs. The costs of inaction are far greater than the sum of these ambitions.

I will balance the Scottish budget, but I refuse to balance it on the back of working people. We will drive efficiency, reform our public services and cut the cost of governing, but we will do it to make Scotland fairer. Our choices will be different.

We can only do this if we focus relentlessly on what matters and make the tough choices that deliver change.

No more distractions, no more constitutional wrangling. I’ll fight for what really matters. That’s what Labour exists to do.

This is our programme for Scotland. It talks to the concerns of the people of Scotland: jobs, safer streets, better schools, our NHS, our environment.

It is the product of the widest and deepest consultation ever undertaken by a political party in this country.

Give Labour your trust. We will fight for what really matters. And that is you, your family and your future.

Iain Gray
Scottish Labour Leader

To download a copy of the manifesto visit www.scottishlabour.org.uk