The Three Pillars of One Nation Labour

Jon Cruddas and Arnie Graf write:

On the doorstep and in meetings around the country, people are telling us that what matters to them is their family, the work they do and the place they live in. Household debt is putting so much pressure on family life. It is why Ed Miliband's agenda for tackling the cost of living crisis and standing up to the big energy companies has struck such a chord.

Month after month prices rise, m for necessities, but wages for most people lag behind. There is visceral anger towards the big six utility companies, and rising resentment over the price of transport. Many people are having to devote five days of working every month just to meet the cost of getting to work.

The cost of rent is becoming prohibitive for many people, taking up 50% or more of their monthly pay. Buying a home is getting beyond hope, especially for their children. Food costs are rising, and university fees are despairing for many. This is partly why so many people are using legal loan sharks, exacerbating their expenses and anxieties.

So family integrity is one pillar of a one-nation Britain, which is why in government Labour will cap energy prices and back up our campaigning against payday lenders with a levy on their profits and a cap on the cost of their loans.

Work to support our families is a second pillar. This is about self-respect and dignity: austerity without strategies for growth and work is dooming a whole generation who do not know about the importance of work in their development as full human beings.

No one should have to work for their poverty. This was the premise behind the living wage. Work should pay enough to enable people to look after their families without the constant anxiety that they will not be able to provide the basic necessities for their children and themselves. In government we will support the living wage campaign with make-work-pay contracts to help businesses raise wages for millions of workers.

The third pillar is a place to belong. We see the empty shops, the potholes, the betting shops and the legal loan sharks in the high streets we campaign on. These places smell of decay. It is hard not to feel a sense of loss and concern for the future when we walk these streets.

And we hear the anger about immigration. People are not anti-migrant, but to them immigration is the cause of rapid social and cultural changes that leaves them not knowing where they fit in. So Labour will make sure everyone in Britain can speak English, the language that binds us together as a national community.

A good place to live is somewhere you can see a future: where things are being built; where you are not afraid to go outside because of scary social behaviour; where your children can buy or rent a home nearby so your family can stay together. That's why in government we will increase home-building to 200,000 a year.

One-nation Labour is for family, for getting Britain working again, and for community. It means doing politics in a new way. Not the old top-down transactional politics of doing things to and for people. But a bottom-up transformative politics of the common good that gives people the power and responsibility to take more control of their lives, their work and their communities.

That is why we are working together to build a one-nation politics by reforming the party and widening involvement in policy-making. Building a dynamic market economy for working people, conserving our common life, and pushing more power down to people requires an active political movement organising for power. To change the country, we must first change the party.