Being an MP for a place you love is an extraordinary gift.
A girl named Rachel transformed my childhood. Life was safe, suburban and comfortable, but ours was a home without books. I met her aged 11, and she introduced me to the joys of poetry and literature. It opened my mind to ideas I could never have dreamed of.
What does the public want? It wants a vested interest in its own energy provision - driving more efficient behaviour. It wants greater choice and responsibility at a local level. And it wants increased use of renewables to protect the environment.
Fading are the days in which a cohort of towering power stations ran the game (and captured all the profits).
We must have the right to name our fears and laugh at those who seek to scare us - or risk giving in to terrorists.
When threats become unspeakable, unshareable and even unreadable, their power over us only grows.
I stand alongside everyone campaigning for better pay and conditions - they are paving the way for a fairer society.
As more and more people demand fair pay, the Government and big corporations are going to have to take notice.
The people who serve your fast food lunch or your after-work drinks deserve dignity - and if big companies don't start paying them enough for a decent standard of living, they have the power to close these businesses. But no one goes on strike lightly.
Labour needs to end its support for expensive nuclear power and vanity projects like HS2, and take a firm stance against the ecologically impossible expansion of airports.
Our economy is failing far too many - forcing parents to use foodbanks to feed their children, demonising migrants and condemning all of us to climate breakdown.
We must instil our future leaders with the expertise, knowledge and skills to prevent climate breakdown and restore nature to health.
Actions speak louder than Climate Emergency declarations.
If we genuinely believe in a bigger future for our country, we have to redistribute both wealth and power - so people can take back control for good, not just for one vote.
We promote new fossil fuel infrastructure, from airport expansion and coal mines in the U.K. to oil pipelines in the U.S. Investments are meant to build and secure our shared future - but all these fossil fuel investments are directly fuelling the climate crisis that threatens to undermine that future.
Once upon a time the Conservative party was a broad church which embraced a range of views.
The creation of regional mayors has done little to reduce the sense that all power is concentrated in Westminster, and all investment in London.
Britain was once notorious as the 'dirty man of Europe' with polluted air, raw sewage pumped into the sea and protected sites being lost at a terrifying rate. E.U. laws and the threat of fines changed much of that.
Huge public spending and borrowing in the face of an existential crisis is clearly the right thing to do, as is putting people's health and wellbeing above the pursuit of economic growth.
The response to coronavirus has shown what can be done when governments put their mind to it.
