History shows that when we lose an election we are often out of power for a decade or more. Think of 1931, 1951 or 1979. My ambition – our responsibility as a party – is to buck that trend. That is what this leadership campaign is about: how we become the people’s party again, on the side of middle and lower-income voters, with a clear plan for the future. That is the only way we win; it’s the only way we live out our values.

The truth is that the future of Britain is up for grabs. Our politics are in flux: the two main parties’ share of the vote has declined by one-third in 50 years. And while globalisation has brought great benefits, it has increased the forces of inequality, unsustainability and insecurity. The new government has the wrong answers but some of the right questions. We cannot afford the comfort zone of kneejerk opposition. We have to get the right answers about how to empower people and communities; how to create wealth; and how to tackle the gap in life chances. Unless we do so, we will be pigeonholed as spendthrift, statist and establishment.

Tony Blair rewrote clause IV – we don’t need to do that again. We do need to put it into practice, in our policies and in the way we do politics. I believe in a Britain where people have power in their communities, over public services and to stand up against the abuse of market power. Our project of bringing democracy to British life doesn’t stop with an election to parliament (and that project isn’t finished). It should run from the top to the bottom of society – in the economy and in the community. The way to beat the ‘big society’ is to stand for a bigger society, not a big government.

For example, Labour was the first government since the second world war to cut crime. That’s why I would defend police numbers and continue our fight against antisocial behaviour. Tackling crime should always be part of our mission; it affects our people. When they think we have given up on their concerns, they give up on us. I want a system where victims have a voice and where criminals face up to their crimes through restorative justice. This is how we break the hopeless cycle of crime.

Empowerment also means fulfilling our commitment to put English local government, outside of London, in a position to lead communities, for example, meeting families’ need for a good home and shaping a new deal on social services and health cooperation. I believe in a Britain where wealth is shared, hard work rewarded and people can enjoy the dignity and purpose of work. We must always be a party of wealth creation as well as fair distribution.

We have to refight the argument about jobs. The Tories’ assumptions about private sector job growth are fantasy. They scrapped the Future Jobs Fund, which kept people in work; cancelled the loan to Sheffield Forgemasters, which would have supported new manufacturing; and they cut university places when the rest of the world is expanding. I would target a return to full employment through a new industrial revolution that supports manufacturing and gets the economy growing again.

We need to be the party thinking through a political economy fit for the modern age. I want ideas like a British Investment Bank emerging from the re-sale of bank shares. I would build a new workplace settlement, based on hard work, innovation and fair pay, reforming corporate governance so employees can sit on remuneration committees.

I am a realist about the deficit. Our party cannot afford economic denial. Labour’s plan to cut it in half in four years would have involved tough decisions. Sweden’s social democrats succeeded in the 1990s because they had a plan to halve unemployment at the heart of their deficit reduction plan. And if tax does need to take the strain, I would double the bank levy to maintain our support to industry, and levy a mansion tax on houses over £2m rather than risk homelessness with cuts to housing benefit.

We must also tackle the gap in life chances. Nothing better defines the difference Labour can make than the fact that in 13 years schools in the poorest areas made the fastest progress. But nothing better defines the work we still have to do than the fact that those from the poorest backgrounds are still least likely to go to the top universities. Our work will not be done until we ensure that where you are born does not determine where you end up. That is why I am passionate about education. I want to get the best graduates into teaching and reward them for working in the toughest schools. I want to create excitement in education again by reducing the burden of testing for teenagers while ensuring 60 per cent of young people are in university, high-quality vocational learning or apprenticeships. Equal opportunity is not just about education, but there will be no equal opportunity until we tackle the achievement gap in education.

A party serious about changing Britain needs a movement that changes communities. We have to rediscover the virtues of mutuality and reciprocity that have too often been dismissed in the Labour tradition as small ‘c’ conservative. During this campaign I have provided training for 1,000 future leaders in the techniques of community organising, learning from the best traditions of trade unions and community campaigning. We have already made a real difference up and down the country, with local people taking action together, showing that though we are out of office we are not out of power.

I am determined that we renew our party so that we are an outward-facing, open and representative movement in every community in the country. As a start I want a democratically elected chair to lead our renewal. I want a leadership academy to provide mentoring and guidance to underrepresented groups. I am targeting a 50:50 gender balance in our parliamentary party. And I am determined that we should fight the Tories, not each other. I have never been part of a briefing culture and I am not going to start now.

The tragedy of the last parliament was that the weaknesses bequeathed by Tony Blair were not addressed, and the strengths were lost. Yet there has been too much trashing of our record in government in this leadership campaign; we should be more proud of our achievements, more humble about our mistakes and more focused on the ideas and politics of the future. During the course of this campaign, I’ve travelled hundreds of miles and met thousands of party members. What we are building together is a genuine movement for change, a movement with a mission: to beat this damaging government; to get back into power; and to do what is written on the back of our membership card – put power, wealth and opportunity in the hands of the many not the few. That is the change that Britain needs.