Daily writing prompt

If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?

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If I could be someone else for a day, I’d be the Prime Minister. Not for the fancy house or the chauffeured car, but because I’d finally have the microphone and the authority to say some things that need saying loudly and clearly in this country.

I’d start by reminding everyone where Britain’s wealth actually came from. This nation was built on the backs of enslaved Africans—forced labour that funded our cities, our universities, and our industries. The slave trade wasn’t some distant shame; it was the foundation. Then, after we finally stopped pretending that was acceptable, we turned around and invited people from the colonies to rebuild a bombed-out Britain after the Second World War. The Windrush generation arrived answering our call, and we repaid them with discrimination, deportation threats, and a collective amnesia about their contribution. My own grandmother arrived during that era, worked her entire life in the NHS, and still faced questions about whether she belonged here.

When COVID-19 hit, who kept the hospitals running? Who drove the buses, stacked the shelves, and delivered the parcels? Migrants. The same people the tabloids demonised one day were “essential workers” and “heroes” the next. The hypocrisy made me physically sick.

Here’s what I’d say as PM that current leaders won’t: legal immigrants are not a burden. They are net contributors to our economy. They start businesses at higher rates, fill skills gaps we’ve failed to address ourselves, and pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. The idea that extending the wait for indefinite leave to remain from five years to ten, or whatever they’re proposing now, somehow protects British workers is nonsense. It just creates a precarious underclass, anxious and easier to exploit.

I’d point out the obvious—that immigration is being scapegoated while actual crises go unaddressed. The NHS is collapsing because of underfunding and poor workforce planning, not because of foreign doctors and nurses. Housing is unaffordable because we stopped building social housing and let speculation run wild, not because of migrant families. Wages are stagnant because of weakened unions and corporate greed, not because someone from Poland took your job. Energy bills are extortionate because of privatisation and global markets, not because of asylum seekers in hotels.

Then there’s Brexit. What a disaster. I remember the promises of £350 million for the NHS, sunlit uplands, and the easiest trade deal in history. Instead, we’ve got Northern Ireland still unresolved, businesses drowning in paperwork, skilled workers leaving, and our economy lagging behind our peers. As PM, I’d be honest: rejoining the EU, or at minimum the single market and customs union, is essential for our prosperity. I’d start that conversation without the tabloid-fearing cowardice that’s characterised the last decade.

My solutions? Proper funding for integration and English language provision. A fast track to settlement for those already here, contributing and building lives. An honest education system that teaches our full history—slavery, the empire, the Windrush, the good and the shameful. Economic policies that actually invest in the regions so opportunity isn’t hoarded in London. And a return to Europe, because isolation is weakness, not strength.

I’d want Britain to be genuinely great again, not in some nostalgic fantasy of empire, but as a diverse, united, peaceful country that faces its past honestly and its future with courage. That’s why I’d take that job for a day. To say what needs saying and hopefully be heard.