A TEESSIDE steelworker facing a bleak future lit up the Labour party conference today with a heart-felt plea to the Prime Minister: “Please save my livelihood and my community.”

Brian Dennis was told shortly before he gave his speech to the party conference in Brighton that he had lost his job at the Redcar blast furnace.

In an impassioned appeal to David Cameron he said: “This morning I was told I’m losing my job.

“Six months ago my wife was told she was going to be made redundant. We are now a household facing life with no work.

“I left school at 16 to work in the shipyards, and when the government shut them down, I moved into the steel industry.

“I witnessed the devastation of families when the plant was mothballed in 2010 and I just can’t believe we’re back here again.

“Every single one of us is clear what we want - we want to work.

“What does the future hold? I’m nearly 50, and I’m proud to say I’m a skilled worker. Skills honed over the years of working in steel - but they are skills too unique to transfer.

Teesside has one of the highest unemployment rates in the UK. What will the future look like for me and my family?

“This isn’t just a speech at a conference. This is a plea to David Cameron to save my livelihood and my community.

“All of us steel workers on Teesside are facing the end of our industry and a very bleak future. Only the Government can save us now.”

Mr Dennis’s speech overshadowed Angela Eagle’s call for politicians and business to join forces in a “race to the top”.

The shadow business secretary told the conference that the Conservatives’ “ideological obsession” with shrinking the state was leaving the economy “vulnerable”.

Ms Eagle, who was also appointed as shadow first secretary of state by leader Jeremy Corbyn, condemned the Government’s reaction to the crisis in the steel industry, telling activists it was “hanging by a thread”.

She said: “We need a dynamic industrial strategy. We need partnerships championed by an active state.

“Yet with this Government we see the opposite. There is a complete failure to support strategic industries and sectors.

“Take the steel industry. As we meet in Brighton, the entire British industry is hanging by a thread and yet the Government seems reluctant to act decisively.

“No other Government in Europe would be so slow to react. The Government must act now with urgency to safeguard the future of steel making in the UK.”

Ms Eagle said the Government was also failing to support the “green economy” and making no progress on tackling the wider “productivity crisis”.

And she added: “This Tory Government is also presiding over a skills emergency which threatens economic growth.”

The shadow business secretary added: “Prosperity in this century is not guaranteed.

“To succeed, Government needs to build the partnerships for businesses to flourish and for the UK to compete successfully in the world.

“That is how we will win in the race to the top.”