In 1997, like all good candidates, I knocked on endless doors.

I remember even now, the look of roads in our mining villages. Street after street of sad-looking houses, with old wooden fences and gates. These neighbourhoods had been ravaged by the Thatcher years.

At that time, a TV programme called Ground Force was just starting and the idea of radically redesigning ordinary gardens and homes was catching on.

Millions followed these home improvement programmes. And a decade later, after ten years of growth under Labour, those same streets had homes with new walls, wrought iron work, porticos over front-doors and windows and exotic plants adorned gardens.

What Ground Force tapped into were popular aspirations and, crucially, Labour’s economic policy enabled people to afford it.

I use this to illustrate that aspirations are not just about getting an education and a roof over your head – although these are the foundation for everything else – they are about so much more.

And aspirations aren’t the property of the middle classes; they reflect the values and lifestyles of the majority of people.

The aspiration for home improvement is so strong that a typical family spends about £5,000 a year improving their home.

We know that in 2010 – we lost – and lost badly.

Just look at the seats we lost in 2005 and the Tory majorities there now, Putney 10,000, Welwyn 17,000, The Wrekin 9,000. This is the mountain we have to climb. And at the next election, we will face Tory MPs with the benefit of five years working their newly gained seats.

This May, on election night the BBC will pan from city hall to city hall to show the pattern of results.

From Leeds to Newcastle to Sheffield and so on.

It will tell us a story about the elections of 2011 – but it will be little guide to the election of 2015.

Because however welcome it will be to regain control of Britain’s big cities, it’s not enough. Labour held all our major cities in the 1980s.

There were less than a dozen Tory MPs in any major city in England or Scotland, but we still lost general elections.

We have to break through and re-establish a local government base in Tory dominated places, mainly in the South, where we have been all but wiped out. It is a big ask, but whatever your strategy, that’s the battleground.

That means winning in areas with growing populations. Areas that are prosperous. Areas where working class voters do not dominate the constituency.

How else did we have Labour MPs in Wimbledon or Putney in 1997?
Winning again means winning in the South.

In 2010, we lost because we were seriously out of step with ordinary working people.

We know we had been out of step for some time. We know that in the end, people had stopped listening to us.

I don’t want to pore over the reasons why Labour lost.

I just want to focus on the importance of people’s aspirations to what they expect from life and to how they view the world.

I believe that we were once the natural party of choice for people who wanted better from life.

So we must be again.

We did not lose in 2010 just because working class voters boycotted Labour. We lost because voters of all ages, and incomes, supported us in fewer numbers.

It wasn’t because we weren’t socialist enough. People weren’t seeking a more left wing alternative. They had just lost confidence in us.

(By the way, they didn’t vote in convincing numbers for the Tories either – and no one voted for the Coalition they ended up with).

We will have to reach out once more to people who are not instinctively Labour. Indeed, as we saw in May 2010, we can’t win without them.

Of course, we’ve known for a long time that to transform the lives of people who rely on the minimum wage, Labour’s needs the consent of those that don’t.

It is a necessary political strategy. Without a successful, dynamic, entrepreneurial economy creating wealth, delivering growth and prosperity, we can’t do any of the other things we want to do. You’ve got to generate wealth in order to redistribute it.

But for me, it’s more than a narrow electoral calculation.

And it’s more than asking the hardworking to deliver the goods for others to share.

Wanting to get on in life, to work hard, to make something of yourself, and to hope for better for your family, those are things I believe in.

They were an essential part of Labour’s reason for being; – 100 years ago at the foundation of our party.

 

But aspirations can be crushed if you don’t understand them.

Here’s what doesn’t meet aspirations.

It doesn’t encourage people to save and invest in their children, if you abolish the Child Trust Fund.

It doesn’t help people to save if you deny them the universal credit if they have £16,000 in savings.

It doesn’t encourage people to strive for a better job, or for that promotion, if a pay rise puts their tenancy at risk.

It doesn’t help a young couple to plan a family, if they can’t get a foot on the housing ladder – and their local authority is turning down applications to build homes right left and centre.

And no use to them either if shared ownership or rent to buy schemes are scarce because Cameron has cut the social housing budget by 60%.

And it doesn’t help aspiration to find out that the best way to work for a fashion magazine is for mummy or daddy to buy you an Internship at a Tory fundraiser.

So no, I don’t believe that David Cameron understands aspiration at all.

I think the Tories understand privilege.

I think they know the price of many things.

They know what pushy parents can achieve – and I say that as a pushy parent myself.

They know the power of people moving to get their kids into the right schools – and the power of social networks.

But they don’t care to understand how often they kick the ladder of opportunity away – how often they dash hopes, or close doors in people’s faces.

When they withdrew EMA, trebled university fees and reduced places, they sent a huge signal to hardworking families up and down the country that if their kids were going to college – the Government would be doing less to help them – and life would be a lot harder.

We should never let them claim to be the party of aspiration.

But what is it we need to look at in the future?

Well to begin with I want us to understand that aspirations change from generation to generation.

I was 34 before I lived in my first home as a home owner. And for some time, we didn’t have carpets, just rugs. Until I became an MP, my cooker was second hand.

Today, when a young couple buy their first place, they want the fitted carpets, the broadband, the new kitchen the IKEA furniture. In other words, they want some of what their parents managed to achieve; but they don’t want to wait as long to get it.

Their experience raises their expectations and their aspirations.

And look at families today. In the 1960s, people had one summer holiday, usually a week – a fortnight if you were well to do.

Today, the over 50s expect four or five breaks a year.

Most of the people in this room expect to visit California in their lifetime, something unheard of forty years ago.

And in twenty years time, most working class families will expect two foreign holidays a year.

The opportunity to save a little to enjoy life – to escape the drudgery to see a part of the world your grandparents never could. That is how the world is changing and we need to get on board.

Foreign travel should never be the preserve of only the well off. Those who work hardest to get that holiday of a lifetime shouldn’t miss out.

Back in 2001, my ideas for the manifesto included tax breaks to families that recycled or invested in green energy. It just seemed to me that some people took a lot of care to do their bit for the environment and we should support that; even if most of those people were comfortably off.

Likewise, tax breaks for childcare seemed fair, even though it was more common for professional couples to be paying out for childcare than shop workers.

In other words, rewarding people for putting in is important. 

 

Let me say… I know the economy is crucial to Labour winning or Government getting re-elected generally.

Ed has talked about the cost of living crisis. Rising prices, stagnant wages, heavy job losses and growth smaller and slower than it should be. And no doubt, we will ask the question that Ronald Reagan asked in the last presidential debate in the 1980 election:

“Are you better off than you were four years ago? Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it was four years ago? Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?”

But in my view this is so much more than just people getting into work, and GDP heading in the right direction – important though jobs are and no matter how welcome the tax revenues growth creates.

The reason we need the economy to do well and people to prosper is to improve their quality of life and help people realise their hopes and dreams.

So they work to live. And live to enjoy.

So YES, of course a party of economic security

YES, a party of hope and opportunity.

YES, but also a party of enjoyment and relaxation.

Dare I say a party of culture and recreation, of sport and leisure
– a party that takes the pressure off.

That’s makes hard work worthwhile. 

 

But I want everyone to share those pleasures.

I am a great believer in social inclusion. Many people need a little help along the way.

I believe the criminal justice system should offer some second chances, and, as a society we pick people up when they fall down.

But we offer those second and even third chances so those people can help themselves and put something into society.

And that is why we are a party of something for something,

Not a party that gives and gives without obligations.

 

 

Every party needs the hardworking families, who work hard and play by the rules.

It sounds clichéd, but we know who we mean. They are pretty self sufficient. They try to do the right thing. They don’t ask for much and don’t complain very often.

And they just want Government to make life a little easier.

I say that Government does have an obligation to those people

That is why we must be a party that listens to them, and makes it easier for those people to realise some of their modest hopes.

 

 

We’re not going to win the next election trying to recreate the 1997 campaign.

And the slogans we used then – a hand-up, not a hand out; rights and responsibilities; for the many not the few – are clichés now.

But they spoke to people. And they told them that Labour was on your side if you wanted to work hard and make a better life for yourself.

When Labour taps into this innate British characteristic, we win elections.

– The parents who left school without any qualifications but want to send their kids to university.
– The single parents working overtime to give their daughters ballet lessons.
– The people who spend their weekends mowing their lawns, doing up the homes and washing their cars.

To some, this concern for material comfort, for enjoyment, seems individualistic.

To some, it appears selfish.

I don’t see this. I believe that the people who have these aspirations also share values of community, of fairness or support for good public services.

But they want the fairness for all to include fairness for “my family as well”.

In 1997, Tony Blair defeated the idea that you only voted Labour if you were poor or a member of the liberal intelligentsia, and the idea that the Tories were the party you voted for if you owned your own home or wanted to make something of yourself.

And the radical, reforming Labour governments of 1945, 1964 and 1997 were the product of broad coalitions across classes – coalitions that saw themselves sharing the gains and benefits – not just providing for others.

Personal advancement and generosity went hand in hand.

 

 

We talk a lot about fairness – but we have to remember that the concept means different things to different people – and what the public mean by fairness is not always the same as what we mean by fairness.

When we talk about fairness, and when we attack the Government for being unfair, we’re often talking about need. We’re saying it’s unfair that the Government’s policies are disproportionately hitting the least well-off in our communities. We’re right to make that argument, I’ve been making it in relation to the cuts to local government, and we’ll keep on making it.

But for much of the public, fairness is as much about exchange – taking out once you have put in – as it is about need.

In a decent, fair society, we have to remember that people care about everyone trying to put in as well as having the right to get the rewards.

Get that balance wrong and we offend their sense of fair play.

 

So we have to reclaim the politics of aspiration.

It’s a tall order. It’s not going to fall into our laps. It’s up to all of us to get out there and make the case for Labour – as a party in tune with these sensibilities.

 

 

Which brings me back to our goals in the coming years.

If we want to get back to winning ways, we can’t just be seen as a welfare party, a trade union party, or a party only for the poorest.

And we must be more than a coalition of angry groups who feel got at by those cuts.
More than a party of protest.
More than a party of the heartlands and big cities.
We were all of those things in the 1980s. And we still lost.

Labour councillors have got that message. They are not going back to the 1980s. Refusing to set budgets and trying to bring down the Tories from town halls draped in red flags.

Our best hope is to reach into the hearts and minds of the 80% of decent working and middle class voters who form the decent majority in those constituencies we won in 1997.

A party of North and South. Of rural and urban. A party that can be trusted to support their aspirations.

Dare I say – a party of hopes and dreams

Let’s make no mistake. It is going to be harder than 1997 – because the Government may have upset certain groups and pursued poor policies. But they won’t look tired, they will still have ideas, and they will use the power of government to make the battle uneven.

So yes, let’s challenge the Coalition’s mistakes robustly.
Let’s expose them if crime rises or NHS waiting lists increase.
But above all, stay close to the outlook and the feelings of that broad majority, talking about what they hope for most – rather than the priorities of the latest briefing from lobby groups.

Do that and we will be better placed to make a fight of the next election.