In the closing days of the 1997 election I spent a frantic few hours scouring Mitcham for a Ford Mondeo. Not just any Mondeo, but one with an owner who intended to switch from Tory to Labour, and was happy to say so to Tony Blair and the world’s media. I eventually found my man who, despite the minor fact that it was actually his son’s car, was word perfect during his 15 minutes of fame. Landslide duly secured by yours truly, with help from Tony Blair and Mondeo Man.

Our quest for the elusive Mondeo Man was essentially Labour’s long search for office rendered as suburban allegory. He represented those mainly white, former working-class voters who populate seats in outer London, the Midlands, Kent and Essex without whose support we are doomed to political irrelevance.

And yet this phenomenon, Mondeo Man, was often misunderstood. It was not an ethnic group or a state of being; people were not born Mondeo Men, nor did they become so by conforming to a societal norm. It was about ambition and aspiration. People wanted to own a Mondeo because it was a good car (still is), and better than the one they had. It was the same instinct that led them to buy their council house, extend it, go on several holidays a year and buy stocks and shares whenever they were offered.

The left has often been wary, even hostile, to a materialist definition of self-improvement. Our comfort zone is in uplifting concepts of the common wealth and the brotherhood of man. We are terrific at describing what we want to liberate people from (ignorance, want etc), but rather vague about what we are liberating them for. In modern parlance this makes us more comfortable with the language of inputs than outcomes. We recite ad nauseam the number of Sure Start centres and wraparound schools, but increasingly struggle to explain to most people how a fair society with justice and equality for all actually means anything to them.

In his foreword to the New Opportunities white paper, Gordon Brown is genuinely moving when describing his vision of ‘real opportunity’ where children ‘fulfil our dreams for them’. The policies he sets out are the right ones: investment in education, skills and family support. But even here there is no attempt to articulate what ‘our dreams’ for our children actually are, as though this is too personal to be political.

Most people measure progress in life with things, rather than rights – when theoretical concepts become actual benefits. This does not make them venal and greedy, it makes them human. The recession has brought forth much schadenfreude from commentators and moral guardians: people lived beyond their means, borrowed to the hilt in pursuit of the false god of stuff; our new-found poverty will allow us to reflect on higher things. We have witnessed the spectacle of bishops in palaces telling people in council houses how wrong it is to aspire to material possessions.

My constituents did not borrow millions to buy yachts. They did over-extend, but mainly to improve their home, upgrade their car or help their children with home deposits. They may now have to rein in their spending but they should not be told that they were wrong to aspire.

The next election will see a pincer movement to force progressives off of the territory of aspiration. The right bitterly regrets conceding this to New Labour. Some on the left believe that materialist aspiration is tawdry and should be confronted, rather than encouraged. Others recognise its importance but struggle with the vocabulary of personal ambition.

In a time when the challenge is to prevent recession from becoming depression it may appear insensitive or Panglossian to speak of aspiration. However, the party that will win the next election will be the one which convinces people that their personal future will be better than their past, despite the setbacks of this downturn. More homeownership, more share-owning, more disposable income, more holidays, more material gain. Mondeo Man was not selfish. He did not want to triumph at others’ expense, but nor did he want to see his own hopes go unfulfilled. We spoke to him once, we must now do so again.