Chicken/Egg | NaPoWriMo #6

This is my first major speech as Prime Minister – and I am going to address the first priority of this government: transforming our economy.

What came first? The chicken or the egg. 

Today, Britain is at a turning point. The decisions we make now will live with us for decades to come. For many years we have been heading in the wrong direction.

Some like to say the egg. I like to say the chicken. The headless chicken. Wandering around in the wrong direction.

Our economy has become more and more unbalanced, with our fortunes hitched to a few industries in one corner of the country, while we let other sectors like manufacturing slide.

The head would have toppled over in one clean swipe to the ground.

It has become over-reliant on welfare, with mass worklessness accepted as a fact of life and around five million people now on out-of-work benefits. 

And there it would lie. And there it would lie. And there it would lie.

It has become far too dependent on the public sector, with over half of all jobs created in the last ten years associated in some way with public spending.

The chicken’s wings would flap – they say a brain is alive for 10 minutes after the body has died. I wonder if the brain was moving.

And, of course, as a country we have become indebted on an unprecedented scale. 

But now, we have an egg.

Our huge deficit and rapidly growing public debt are the clearest manifestations of our economic mistakes – the glaring warning sign overhead telling us we have taken the wrong route.

My friend has always found eggs sickening. Her parents never let her eat eggs. 

We have been sleepwalking our way to an economy that is unsustainable, unstable, unfair and, frankly, uninspiring.

But cooking an egg poached is more difficult than just plain old sunny side up. Why show the sunny side? 

Now that this country is waking up to it, the people of Britain – the people of the world – want to know: can we turn this around? 

With a sunny-side-up, you can flip the egg around.

Can we rebalance economic power across our regions, across different industries, so that more people have a stake in our success? 

Watch it sizzle in the pan.

My answer is an unequivocal, emphatic yes.

And the yolk is cooked, forever.