Opinion: This is why I believe the best days are ahead of us

Given events, it’s important to remember some basic facts. The biggest is that this government is making a £70 billion intervention on the cost of your energy. People were predicting energy bills would increase to £6500 a year - this will will now not happen.

In fact, the unit cost that you pay will not go up at all over the next two years. I know this Energy Price Guarantee is a huge relief to so many people in Peterborough. As the weather gets colder, it really matters.

The decision to cut the basic rate of tax and get the economy moving involves another £6 billion, putting £170 in most workers’ pockets next April. The row about the additional rate of income tax involved just £2 billion but the Government listened and this will now not happen.

Things are challenging, globally. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the supply-chain pressures unleashed by the pandemic saw to that. Across the world, there is a problem with inflation.

But the UK economy has been doing better than many thought, with our growth figures revised up by the statisticians. And the opportunities are there.

Now we need to seize them. That’s what the Prime Minister’s speech was all about: growth, growth, and growth.

When the economy gets bigger, the money is there to bring down taxes, while spending enough on public services. It’s a virtuous cycle.

Growth helps us to fund the NHS, protect the vulnerable, reward hard work and get through the current economic headwind. That’s why we need to break out of “a high-tax, low-growth cycle”, as the PM put it.

Saying that is one thing. Delivering it involves doing certain things differently, but that’s precisely why Peterborough voted to leave the European Union.

Now we can do things differently. Those who want to stop us are the same people who back the idiotic protestors gluing themselves to roads, the militant unions calling strikes, the hotels and lawyers for those illegally crossing the Channel... it’s a list that goes on.

This change will help get us a growing economy and a better future.

Inevitably, there will be scaremongering about what it all means. That happened in the conference hall, when two Greenpeace protestors kicked off. It’s been constant from vested interests and their natural allies, the Labour Party.

They don’t face the challenges of working people. Peterborough is a working city – we do.

As doers, we get on with things. Growth was already central to our plans, with the new university, city-centre investment, new businesses and jobs.

I’ve always believed that our best days as a city are ahead of us. Come wind or rain, we have a PM and a government who believe that too.