Progress members will have seen the coverage of the speech which I will be giving to Labour party members in South Yorkshire tonight. This has generated a lot of heat – as much for what I am supposed to be saying about Gordon Brown’s leadership as what I am not. As ever, the truth is a little bit stranger than the fiction!

For the record, I am fully behind Gordon Brown as the leader of our party and the prime minister who has displayed extraordinary and undeniable leadership on the international stage.

There has to be space in our political arena for thought-provoking ideas, for debate about the nature of our political processes and the relationship between government and governed without everything being focused on and routed back to the position of the prime minister. That is why we need what I called a “different form of politics”.

What I am calling for today is a renewed focus on the domestic agenda – and I am putting forward a range of proposals this evening. These represent a return to the values espoused by those who years ago believed that active citizenship was central to the progressive vision of a good society – a vision which today embodies our core values of empowerment, inclusion, reciprocity and responsibility.

For too long, parts of the left in Britain have forgotten this tradition and its importance, not just as a good in itself but as a bulwark against a statist version of social progress on the one hand and the unfettered market on the other.

Our “new politics” must focus on the environment and climate change; the fight against poverty; enterprise and innovation in our economy and social life; and putting the consumer and user of services at the very heart of provision, not the interests of the provider. To ensure fairness and opportunity reaches the whole of our society we need to engage people at key times and in key parts of their life, in active citizenship and in feeling that they are part of the solution.

What we must not do is turn the clock back. Siren voices within Labour may want to re-run the modernisation debates which took place in the party in the early 1990s. But the old battles are over and the need for visionary action is self-evident. So talk of going back to the past and wiping out the last two decades is dangerous.

But just as important is to say to my colleagues that neither can we simply hark back with nostalgia to the Blair years. Tony Blair himself would say that the solutions of 1997 cannot be the solutions of 2009.

So what we need is Brownism for the early 21st century. We have to protect the well-being of those most vulnerable by offering an alternative to the universal cuts and reduction in the role of government offered by Conservatives and Liberal Democrats. But this means a different sort of government. Active rather than passive, engaged rather than intent on reductions in the public sphere – but much more than that. It is about what sort of society we can expect to see in 10 or 15 years’ time.

In coping with an ageing population, with another generation who have started to experience unemployment (including young people), we must move to re-energise our nation, to reinforce mutuality, a sense of common purpose and a recognition of our inter-dependence. With government support but without an expectation that government can do it all, it is possible to have a different sort of politics that shares the challenge and the decision-making and the delivery with the population as a whole.

Essentially, I am calling for the renewal of ‘civil society’ or, in simple terms, what government can help us to do for ourselves.

So tonight I will be proposing the re-creation of city and regional banks, which disappeared 20 years ago but which, as I have seen for myself, have worked so well in putting investment back into local communities in Germany, Italy and northern Spain; new consortia of public, private and voluntary sectors to audit and re-direct investment to the areas of greatest local need, overseen by sub-regional forums; greater use of microcredit and substantial reform of the Social Fund; and the devolution of the welfare state to put power and responsibility in the hands of individuals, families and communities.

It is not enough for government to hand down solutions from on high. We have to reach a new accord with the electorate and redefine our politics, so that each of us as individuals knows that we hold part of the solution to tackling this economic crisis and building a better Britain.

I welcome the changes made in our society which have been put in place by the government over the last 12 years; but pulling them together into a coherent whole is a major challenge. Providing a narrative which resonates with people in their own lives is an urgent priority if we are able to communicate our message and to offer something more than merely retrenchment and recrimination.

Now is the time – under this prime minister – to make that vision clear and to carry people with us in believing that there really can be a better tomorrow.

Full text of David Blunkett’s speech available at www.davidblunkett.org