Before the election, Rachel Reeves warned that any incoming UK Government would face the worst inheritance since the Second World War.

Taxes at a seventy year high.

Debt through the roof.

An economy only just coming out of recession.

We knew all those things, we were honest about them during the election campaign and warned about the difficult choices ahead.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, it quickly emerged that there were things were much worse than the Tories had us believe. They refused to take the difficult decisions, covered up the true state of the public finances and then ran away, leaving Labour to clean up their mess.

The British people voted for change and we will deliver that change. We won’t shy away from making unpopular decisions now if it’s the right thing for the country in the long term. We will restore economic stability and never stand by and let this happen again. We will fix the foundations of our economy, so we can rebuild Britain and make every part of our country better off.

After 14 years of populist politics, the hard work of change has begun.