Comrades,

I’m sure that you, like me, share a profound sense of disappointment at the loss of the Glasgow East by-election. However, what we must remember is that this was a marginal seat and was always going to be difficult to hold in the mid term. If we look at the sort of people who live there we find lots of very poor, working class people living in public housing. Many are unemployed. Frankly, these are not the sort of aspirational hard working families that are Labour’s core vote. We cannot be surprised that this is not a Labour seat and we should thank everyone involved in the campaign for getting our candidate so close to victory. Indeed, this defeat shows that we are on the path to victory at the next election, just as our defeats at Crewe and at Henley also demonstrated. At this stage in the electoral cycle every defeat is a victory.

Some of you have said that the government is drifting, that we have no plan. This is quite wrong. We have a number of plans. Firstly, wee Jimmy Purnell has just announced plans under our ‘Work shall set you free’ strategy to get the long term sick and disabled back to work. Secondly, under our new defence review ‘War is peace’ we have set out plans to spend £3bn on new nuclear warheads. Furthermore, the cause of peace may necessitate British forces attacking Iran should our bestest friend in the world deem it necessary. Never underestimate the lengths we will go to, the bombs we will buy, the wars we will fight to defend peace. Thirdly, our ‘Freedom is slavery’ policy is enjoying considerable success. We will introduce ID cards, limit the right to protest, lock up terrorists for as long as we like, keep a database of DNA from anyone that a police officer thinks necessary and continue to extradite people to the US on the flimsiest of pretexts without any reciprocal agreement.

Finally, we will limit what we tell people about our successes such as Tax Credits as we don’t want to boast. Also, we can’t have party members knowing what policy is let alone having a role in deciding it. Debate causes disunity and disunity leads to defeat. You don’t need to know in detail what we’re planning just cheer loudly when we announce it. If you don’t like it or don’t understand it, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to, just trust that we know better. This ignorance is our strength as a party for it promotes unity around my leadership. So, let’s rally around and I’ll get on with the job.