Renewal needs to be grounded in core values that shape modern policies that address the social, economic and political issues of today and the future. We know what the issues are – jobs, economic security, affordable housing, social mobility, poverty, urban renewal, education and health service excellence, climate change and empowering local communities.

Labour must not abuse the opportunity it has now to listen, respond, and reform itself – both in terms of policy and message as well as organisation and culture.

Labour needs a strong electoral machine, but like Obama in his Presidential election the Labour Party also needs to reach out and form social connections in a modern society that isn’t class based in the traditional sense anymore. Renewing our membership and invigorating our Party has to mean more than it has done in recent years.

New Labour shifted the ground of British Politics back to the centre and in many areas of policy to the centre left. In the wake of the election a space has opened in British politics to unify the centre left around a new message and the values and policy that embraces the role the state can play in improving people’s lives and in enabling and empowering individuals and communities.

Localism is not a Tory or Liberal idea; it is a Labour idea that runs through the heart of what a democratic socialist approach to politics must be about in the 21st Century. Our beliefs in cooperative society, that through our action as a community together we can improve the lives of all, are of such relevance in motivating and empowering people who feel politics is remote and of no relevance to them. Instead of politics being something that is done to them, or a Government that forces responsibilities on them, we need to see localism grow from the community, embracing diversity but promoting equality from the neighbourhood up to government. Let us be the party that speaks out for turning the political system on its head.

Our politics must be the politics of people – in touch not only with their aspirations but also delivering on the politics of hope.

We have to break the monopoly on power at the centre. Whitehall and the Westminster square mile have become the symbols of all that is wrong with our politics and neither the Liberals or Conservatives will give up that centralised power.

Strong local leadership in town halls driving local agendas of regeneration, of educational excellence and community empowerment is a Labour tradition that we should draw on when re-crafting our relationship with the voters.

Antony Crosland’s seminal work ‘the future of socialism’ can yet again be a source of inspiration.

John Smith recast the classic theme of modern Labourism, the call for social justice, in the 1990s, and now twenty years on the Labour Party needs to renew the call again based on the reality of life for millions who we should champion as a party that truly understands people.

Crosland’s analysis of the failings of the market economic system is as profound today and the new right has no answer because their political philosophy is bankrupt. The state had to step in to prop up capitalism and the government now has a role in reshaping the economy. The new economic agenda is about environmental as well as industrial renewal, it must be focused on science and innovation as well as on corporate social responsibility. These can be powerful new economic values.

Finally, Crosland’s ‘good society’ is far more relevant than Cameron’s catch all big society. The importance of community, of freedoms to innovate and express local diversity, of cooperative society at a local neighbourhood level and social responsibility as opposed individualism all flow through this idea of the ‘good society’.

Can Labour reach out beyond itself and unify that progressive alliance, and choose the mature politics of renewal around a greater mission, the cause of social justice in the 21st Century?