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I have just come from Buckingham Palace, where I have accepted His Majesty the King’s invitation to form a government. In doing so, I’m acutely conscious that I am the sixth person in the last 10 years to walk up this street, and the seventh Prime Minister since 2016. So this is a moment for reflection, and for new resolution. It requires my generation of politicians to raise our game and rise to a new challenge. Britain needs to show the world that we can regain our stability once again. That is our challenge, to make politics work, and to make it work better. I know people at home are fed up with politics. I hear you. And I want to be honest with you. We have not been good enough, and we need to be better.

We will be. We will make this moment a circuit breaker for Britain, bringing forward the biggest changes in the last 40 years. A new political model, and a new economic model. Because Britain did take some wrong turns. In the 1980s, political power was centralized, economic power privatized, and large parts of the country de-industrialized. And many of those places still haven’t recovered. Many people feel as though they’re still in decline, and that they don’t have the ability to turn things around. So we will change politics, to make it more collaborative, more about problem-solving than point-scoring. And we will take power out of here and carry it into every postcode in the land, so communities can do more. And in doing more, we will build a new economy. We will put life’s essentials back under stronger public control, to make them affordable to you again. We will re-industrialize Britain, and use public procurement to back British industry. Later this year, I will bring forward a new plan for Britain, a 10-year plan, laying out a path from where we are now to where I believe we all want Britain to be, wherever we’re coming from, whatever party we support. But I can also do something to give people breathing space now, help with the cost of living. I will set out some of those measures starting tomorrow, including how we pay for them. We will help more young people into work by changing the education system, and by giving them more support, including more mental health support. And we will build more council homes. That is the fair and sustainable way to bring the welfare bill down, to meet our fiscal rules, and to honor our commitments on defense to our international partners. We will help people to live well by building a more preventative state, investing in people’s success rather than paying for failure. And that work starts now. I will soon go through that door behind me and issue my first instruction, to end rough sleeping in our country. It’s about putting the right values and the right standards at the heart of government.

I will put the care of people at the heart of everything I do. I will give this my all. And I ask you all to pull with me. Let’s build a new national sense of unity, of common purpose, and positivity. Let us make this the moment when Britain starts to believe again, the moment we bring back hope. Thank you very much, everybody.