Gordon Brown opens the elections Video

Found on YouTube, and added 19 hours ago. Yesterday, when I looked for it, to embed here, it was not yet available. Here it is now.

And here it is the text, if you want it, too.
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Gordon Brown, surrounded by his Cabinet members, announces a general election for May 6 on the steps of 10 Downing Street text from: Telegraph.co.uk
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/election-2010/

''It will come as no surprise to all of you, and it is probably the least well-kept secret of recent years, but the Queen has kindly agreed to the dissolution of Parliament and a General Election will take place on May 6.

''I come from an ordinary middle class family in an ordinary town, and I know where I come from and I will never forget the values - doing the right thing, doing your duty, taking responsibility, working hard - that my parents instilled in me.

''Over these last few months this Government, at every time it's fought hard, facing the biggest world recession, to fight on behalf of hard-working families on middle and modest incomes.

''Over the next few weeks I will go round the country - the length and breadth of our land - and I will take to the people a very straightforward and clear message: Britain is on the road to recovery and nothing we do should put that recovery at risk.

''There will be many big challenges and many big decisions to make over the next few months upon which our future success depends.

''Get the big decisions right - as we did in the last 18 months since the world recession - and jobs, prosperity and better standards of living will result. Get the big decisions wrong and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are diminished as a result.

''Our economy is now moving forward, but to withdraw millions of pounds from the economy would put recovery at risk. Unemployment has now been falling, but a government that is not prepared to implement our plans to help the unemployed will see unemployment rise faster again. Small businesses are starting to grow but a double-dip recession would hit thousands of them.

''That is why I am asking the British people - I'm asking you, the British people - for a clear and straightforward mandate to continue the urgent and hard work securing the recovery, building our industries for the future, and creating a million skilled jobs over the next five years.

''And I am asking the British people also for a mandate that, as we cut the deficit by half over four years through fair taxes and reductions in the public expenditure, that we will maintain and improve our frontline public services - our police, our schools and our hospitals.

''And I want to give a direct guarantee to every single citizen of Britain that, when you need the police, when you need help with cancer care, when you need your GP at the evenings and weekends, when you need as a child to have personal tuition in your school, then these public services will be there, directly guaranteed to you as individual citizens when you need them, and accountable to you and your family.

''And we will not allow 13 years of investment and reform in our public services, to build up the future of these great services, to be put at risk.

''During these next few weeks we will keep in our minds and hearts the work of courage that is being done by our soldiers and our armed forces in Afghanistan. And we will support them in every way in the fight that they are taking to terrorism that is still a threat to our land.

''But I have one final mandate to ask of the British people as well. It is a mandate to improve public trust in our democracy and in our public life. Politics has been scarred by recent events. In the next few days I will put forward a comprehensive plan so that the people of this country can be sure that there is transparent, accountable, open and democratic politics being pursued in this country, at every stage accountable to them in the future. And I want us to renew the contract between the people and those who they are sworn to serve.

''I am not a team of one. As everybody can see, I am one of a team. A team with energy, with substance and with ideas to lead this country in a second decade of a still new century.

''We will fight for fairness at all times. We will say to the British people, our cause is your cause. The future is within our grasp, it is a future fair for all. Now, all of us, let's go to it. Thank you very much.''