Some people have asked me for examples of why that was the case, and I wanted to explain tonight whats happened over the last nine months as fully as I can.
Rail fares go up once a year on 2 January. It's the perfect opportunity to show that this Tory Government aren't on the side of working people. Commuters who've seen their season tickets go up by more than 26% since 2010. Some of whom are paying more for their rail fares than their mortgage. Four, five even six thousand pounds a year. People who live in Essex and on the Kent coast, in suburbs and small towns, in marginal seats. Many of them are not Labour voters, but they are the people we need to win over.
It is a huge date in the political calendar every year. We had the opportunity not just to criticise the Government, but to show we had a real Labour alternative. Our flagship policy. One that unites our party.
My staff spent weeks preparing briefing materials for MPs and constituency parties across the country. Trawling through mountains of rail fare information to provide examples of the season tickets that had risen the most and that cost the most. Examples for every MP and CLP. Like Nottingham to Derby where the cost of an annual season ticket has risen by almost 30% since 2010.
And over the Christmas period we were listening in to Network Rail conference calls, monitoring the engineering works. Several calls every day including Christmas Day and Boxing Day, even New Years Eve.
On 4 January a cold dark Monday morning I was at Kings Cross at 7am doing Radio 5 and BBC TV. Standing with Jeremy and the Rail Union General Secretaries for the media photocall. It was a crucial day in the Partys media grid. And all across the country local party activists were outside railway stations in the cold and the dark, leafleting commuters with the materials wed prepared. Armed with the briefings and statistics.
Incredibly, Jeremy launched a Shadow Cabinet reshuffle on the same day. This was the reshuffle that had been talked about since the Syria vote a month earlier. A vote where I supported Jeremys position. The reshuffle that meant all our staff spent Christmas not knowing whether they'd have a job by the New Year. By mid-afternoon the press were camped outside the Leader's office. They were there for the next 3 days.
It knocked all the coverage of the rail fare rise and our public ownership policy off every news channel and every front page. I respect completely Jeremys right to reshuffle his top team. But why then? It was unnecessary and it was incompetent.
It let me down, it let my staff down but most of all it let down the Labour campaigners and trade union members, people like you, who had given up their time to go out campaigning for us that morning.
Now Id ask you to imagine how you would you feel if you agreed something with your boss but he then did something completely different. Something that undermined you. Something they hadn't even had the courtesy to tell you about.
HS2 has always been controversial, including in our Party, but it is something that I believe is vital for the future of our country.
It has the support of all the rail unions. It has the support of Labour leaders in the great cities like Birmingham and Manchester and Leeds and Nottingham. It is important for jobs and skills in Derby and Doncaster and across the country and it is our official policy to support it, as agreed by the Shadow Cabinet and our National Policy Forum.
Ive been one of HS2s strongest supporters so I when I took up the job in Jeremys Shadow Cabinet I wanted to be absolutely sure we were on the same page.
I met his Director of Policy to talk it through. We talked about the most difficult parts of the project, the impact at Euston in London. I'd been working with Councillor Sarah Hayward and her colleagues at Camden for more than 2 years to try and help them get what they wanted for their local residents.
It had been very difficult. I'd been to visit several times, meeting residents and businesses and dealing with some hostile media. But we secured real concessions changes that will make a difference to local residents. It didnt matter that it was in a nominally safe seat. It was the right thing to do.
Despite our agreed policy, despite Jeremy's Director of Policy and I agreeing our position, without saying anything to me, Jeremy gave a press interview in which he suggested he could drop Labours support for HS2 altogether. He told a journalist on a local Camden newspaper that perhaps the HS2 line shouldnt go to Euston at all but stop at Old Oak Common in West London but he never discussed any of this with the Shadow Cabinet, or me, beforehand. I felt totally undermined on a really difficult issue.
And when 2 frontbenchers voted against the 3 line whip at 3rd Reading in March he did nothing. Telling one of them well I've done it enough times myself.
Breaking the principles of collective responsibility and discipline without which effective Parliamentary opposition is not possible. When I raised my concerns it was simply shrugged off. It undermined me in front of colleagues and made me look weak.It made me feel like I was wasting my time. That my opinion didn't matter. And it made me miserable.
I'd discuss it with my political adviser, a Labour Party member of staff and activist from Nottingham who has also lost his job in all this, and we'd agree to go on because the policy mattered. Because we wanted to keep holding the Government to account. Because we love the Labour Party.
This didn't happen once or twice.
It happened time and time again.
The EU 4th Rail Package is a bit complex to explain here and now, but it had the potential to make it difficult to implement our new rail policy.
I'd been working with MEPs to ensure it was amended or blocked for the last 3 years. We felt we could live with the final draft issued in April but it was a very sensitive issue. ASLEF and the RMT were on the Leave side in the referendum because of their concerns.
So when Jeremy talked about it in a speech, in very Euro-sceptic terms, without giving me any warning let alone discussing it with me, I was concerned and asked to meet him.
Our frontbenchers were being challenged on the issue in the media, but there was no common position. I asked and asked. After my staff chasing virtually every day for a month, we got a meeting.
We put together a briefing paper in advance. We drafted some lines to take in any press interviews for us to give to all Labour MPs. We discussed the lines with his Policy staff and made some changes in response to comments.
We agreed a final version. We sat down together and discussed what was in the 4th Rail Package, how we were ensuring it didn't stop our policy, how we'd been working with our MEPs and the Socialist Group and we agreed the lines to take.
The lines were circulated to all frontbenchers, to all MPs, to ensure they knew what our policy was and how to deal with difficult questions.
But Jeremy went on SkyNews and took a completely different, eurosceptic line. Not what we'd agreed. With the potential to make us look divided. It undermined me, my staff and his staff. I wondered why I was bothering to put in the hard work.
Youve all heard stories about pro-European speeches being downgraded, events, being cancelled, and Jeremy and his staff privately subscribing to Eurosceptic views.
And I felt that I was watching my leader deliberately sabotage the campaign on an issue on which he and I had a personal agreement.
How would you feel if your boss undermined your work and when you complained he listened and then did nothing different?
How would you feel if you were part of a team and you knew that not only was your boss undermining you but that this was happening to other colleagues?
You can agree or disagree about whether Jeremy was half hearted about the Labour In campaign.
You can agree or disagree about whether it's Ok to take 5 days holiday 3 weeks before the most important vote in my lifetime.
But I sat at the Regional Count with Glenis Willmott the Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party, my friend, a fellow trade unionist from the East Midlands doing media duty for our Party.
And as we left at 5am, defeated and in despair, we finally got sent lines to take from the Leader's office. Acknowledging Kate Hoey and Gisela Stuart for their work in the Leave campaign. Their work in direct opposition to Labour Party policy.
And shortly after we heard Jeremy calling for the immediate triggering of Article 50. Without any discussion with the Shadow Cabinet or the Leader of the European Parliamentary Labour Party.
Think about that. The country had just voted to leave the EU after more than 40 years and Jeremy made a major announcement on the Partys position without waiting to discuss it with the Shadow Cabinet, without even consulting the leader of our MEPs in Europe.
How can that be right?
