Resilient towns must be at the heart of our post-pandemic recovery

10 Sep 2020

House Magazine Now is the time for the Government to recognise the UK’s city-centric economic model is broken. We need to build more resilient towns and commit to re-building our manufacturing sector. At the heart of my Aberavon constituency sits Port Talbot – a proud, industrial, seaside town with a…

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Resilient towns must be at the heart of our post-pandemic recovery

26 Aug 2020

LabourList At the heart of my Aberavon constituency sits Port Talbot, a genuinely welcoming seaside town in South Wales with a proud industrial, steelmaking history, surrounded by villages and valleys that add so much character to our local area. Our steelworks remain front-and-centre to the town’s economy and identity –…

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This Isolationist UK Government Must Do More To Stand Up For The Rohingya

14 Aug 2020

Burma Campaign As the recently appointed Shadow Minister for Asia and the Pacific I have come to understand just how isolated and absent from the global stage consecutive Conservative governments have left the UK. Many on the government benches celebrated Brexit as a chance to reshape our global alliances and…

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Joint Statement On Tata Steel

24 Jul 2020

Joint Statement From Stephen Kinnock MP and David Rees MS: “Yesterday we met on-line with senior management of Tata Steel UK in order to discuss reports that appeared in the Sunday Times regarding Tata Steel’s proposal to transition the Port Talbot steel works from its current blast furnace to an…

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What we needed was an urgent package of economic measure with a clear focus: jobs, jobs, jobs

17 Jul 2020

South Wales Evening Post When Rishi Sunak stood at the Dispatch box to deliver his summer statement what my Aberavon constituents needed to hear was a back to work budget, focused on the retention and creation of jobs. Instead we got a grab-bag of gimmicks. Less than twenty-four hours after…

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Britain must reassert its values and interests on the global stage – starting with a new China strategy

23 Jun 2020

Politics Home The UK has been sleepwalking in our relationship with China. Now the international community’s faces a serious geo-political problem When China began its long journey towards reform under Deng Xiaoping, his mantra was: ‘Hide your strength, bide your time, never take the lead’. And for 30 years the…

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Viva Port Talbot is uniquely placed to help local businesses – now we all need to do our bit by shopping local

20 Jun 2020

South Wales Evening Post As restrictions lift and we try to get back to a new normal, it’s a very different world to the one before lockdown. For the high street shop the coronavirus and the post-lockdown world is presenting an unprecedented challenge. A trip to the town centre or…

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It’s vital we permanently remove the threat of any escalation into a future nuclear conflict

01 May 2020

House Magazine After reports that China conducted a low-yield underground nuclear test, it’s critical the international community works to universally ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. The world’s greatest powers have both a legal and moral obligation to pursue multilateral nuclear disarmament. Decades of summit diplomacy between the United States…

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Urging The Government To Back British Steel

30 Apr 2020

After urging the Government to back British Steel in Prime Minister’s Questions and writing to the Chancellor to emphasis the importance of a strong and healthy steel industry to a post-pandemic recovery, I spoke with the South Wales Evening Post and BBC Radio Wales about how the steelworks is the…

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Leave voters are a vital part of Labour’s past, present and future

05 Apr 2020

Express on Sunday Labour finally has a new leader, and we can at last move on from the darkest five year period in our 120-year history. Yesterday the unelectable Jeremy Corbyn was replaced by a highly competent, experienced and grounded Prime Minister-in-waiting – precisely the sort of leadership our country…

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This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to re-build trust in our heartlands, that’s why I’m backing Lisa Nandy

13 Jan 2020

Politics Home The nightmare of Friday 13th December is something that Labour Party members and supporters should never forget. I watched in despair as brilliant colleague after brilliant colleague was defeated by Conservative MPs who will do so little for the four million British children in poverty, or for those…

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TATA’s Warning Has To Be A Wake-Up Call For This Tory Government

09 Jan 2020

South Wales Evening Post In 2016 I went to India as part of a Community Union-led delegation to meet Tata Steel’s management in the midst of a crisis that nearly led to the loss of 4,000 jobs in Port Talbot. Our community fought tooth and nail to make Tata recognise…

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Slowly Labour has become a puppet of the People’s Vote campaign

19 Dec 2019

What happened on Friday, December 13 was nothing short of a horror-show for the Labour Party. We lost what felt like an A-Z of English and Welsh ‘heartland’ seats – Ashfield, Bassetlaw and Bolsover all the way through to Workington, Wrexham and Ynys Môn. Many of these 60 seats had…

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The nightmare of Friday 13 December needs to shake my party into action

18 Dec 2019

New Statesman The darkest hours of 13 Friday are a fairly obvious setting for a horror movie, and last Friday was certainly that. We witnessed a bloodbath that saw Labour having its heart ripped out in Ashfield, Bolsover, Blyth Valley, Don Valley, Leigh, Redcar, Scunthorpe, Wakefield, Wrexham — the list…

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Stephen Kinnock and David Rees AM statement on Tata Steel’s announcement

18 Nov 2019

Commenting on the announcement today by Tata Steel, Stephen Kinnock, Labour parliamentary candidate for Aberavon, and David Rees, Assembly Member for Aberavon said: “This is a devastating blow to the workforce, their families and the wider community. It leaves steelworkers in great uncertainty as they await more details of any job losses…

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Labour’s route to power lies in reflecting the communitarian values of its neglected heartlands

21 Sep 2019

Politics Home Labour’s next manifesto needs to be an offer to the whole nation. Britain is deeply divided, but our divisions have been a cause, rather than a symptom, of the EU referendum. Over the past 40 years, the policies of consecutive governments have allowed our economy to be heavily…

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Hardcore Brexiteers and Remainers shout the loudest but they don’t speak for the country

15 Sep 2019

Sun on Sunday IN 2016 more than 17.4m people voted to leave the European Union. A year later both main parties – Conservatives and Labour – stood on election manifestos promising to respect the public’s wishes by leaving the EU with a deal. Yet two years on, the debate has…

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Boris Johnson must recognise that the Withdrawal Agreement Bill is a strong basis for a Brexit deal

11 Sep 2019

Politics Home When Theresa May stood on the steps of Downing Street on 21 May 2019, following 6 weeks of cross party talks, and outlined the details of 10 changes she was making to improve her Brexit deal, it should have been a watershed moment. Among the concessions included a…

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The Lib Dems’ plan to revoke article 50 is as undemocratic as the race to no deal

10 Sep 2019

The Guardian Today the Liberal Democrats have moved from being a party supporting a second referendum on EU membership to one that simply wants parliament to revoke article 50 at the earliest opportunity. This type of polarising behaviour mirrors the no-deal extremists on the other side of the debate and…

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Purists have played into Johnson’s hands – our options for preventing No Deal are now very limited

29 Aug 2019

Boris Johnson’s Trumpian decision to prorogue Parliament at a time of national emergency is illustrative of an era where ‘strong-arm’ politicians feel able to exploit public disillusionment with mainstream politics by running rings around the democratic processes which form the very foundation of any liberal society. Forget rhetoric about funding…

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POLITICO — Postcard from Port Talbot

16 Aug 2019

Source: https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/london-playbook/politico-london-playbook-corbyns-move-postcard-from-port-talbot-wollaston-goes-yellow/ Author: Jack Blanchard POSTCARD FROM PORT TALBOT LIFE’S A BEACH: The sands at Aberavon stretch for three miles along the south Wales coast and look magnificent even on a wet and blustery afternoon. It’s hardly a day for sunbathing, but walkers are still out along the prom enjoying the…

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