Ahead of the budget this month, I’ve been reminded what our political battle in opposition is really about. Having returned to proper Saturday morning campaigning form after giving birth to my lovely daughter, my Wirral constituents have had a few words for me on the doorstep.

They tell me that life isn’t easy at the moment. Too many of them are having what I call Dinner Table Conversations. That is, money is tight so mums and dads have to sit round their dinner table after tea and ask themselves, ‘What can we cut out? What can we live without?’ Not the mortgage, and probably not much from the fuel costs or the weekly shop. Kids’ pocket money can go, and so can the thought of any new clothes, and the holiday this summer. This is Ed Miliband’s insightful description of the ‘squeezed middle’ in reality. But sadly, for those caught in the middle, as well as people on low incomes, it’s going to get worse. For now middle Britain is facing insecurity as well: the feeling that times have been hard, and who knows when it will improve?

This is not a marginal issue – this at the centre of British politics. According to the Office for National Statistic, 71 per cent of British taxpayers earn between £12,000 and £50,000 per year. And the Institute for Fiscal Studies found in January that the median income in households with children is set to fall in real terms by 4.2 per cent between 2010-11 and 2015-16.

In other words, the average family with two kids will have £1250 less in income by the end of the parliament. So the future across the next few years is not looking good for those in the middle. And people know it: a recent YouGov poll found 73 per cent of people thinking the state of the economy was quite bad or very bad, and 84 per cent of people believing their the financial situation of their household would stay the same or get worse over the coming year.

The average family I represent – whether working in public or private sector – may well have now faced pay freezes, recruitment freezes, and redundancy threats. They must be starting to wonder when life is going to pick up. They worry about providing for their old age, and how they will meet the cost of any care they require. Not so long ago, someone in Wirral living on an average wage could have expected to be able to spend enough to live comfortably and put aside some savings against the future. For many, there is now nothing left at the end of the month.

Add to that the threats they see to public services: in Wirral we’ve seen a return to the problem of healthcare waiting lists, for example. Recently, a lady I met on her doorstep told me about a member of hospital staff who said to her: ‘I don’t know how long you’ll wait – it could be 18 weeks, 18 months, or 18 years …’ Now, we Scousers pride ourselves on our sense of humour, but this is beyond a joke. Those on middle incomes who cannot buy their way out of life’s problems need public services to improve, and I suspect the opposition to the NHS bill is driven by their view that top-down reorganisation is a distraction from this mission.

We cannot underestimate the impact of this insecurity for those in the middle. For the first time since the early 1990s, low- and middle-income families are losing hope. They are losing the sense that life will soon be better. They know that the government is hell-bent on cutting back state support; they see costs rising and their income staying the same, at best.

So what can Labour say to these families? First, we need to make George Osborne’s failure absolutely clear. He’s first and foremost a highly political chancellor who has sought to capitalise on a global economic crisis. Yet we should point out that he’s created a quiet domestic crisis of his own: a crisis of worry for the majority of hard-working people in our country, where those in work are not sure of their future and their kids’ career seems over before it has begun.

Second, we need to show that we have clear priorities, which is why Ed Balls and the Treasury team’s campaign on tax credits is so vital: it is a costed demonstration of alternative choices that could be made immediately to change the fortunes of those on low and middle incomes. The same goes for the argument we have made over the past year about VAT. A reversal of this tax hike that hits those with less hardest can help make ends meet now, and open the possibility of saving for the future. We have to give people back a sense of progress, that Britain has a future.

And on public services, we have to champion the needs of families up and down the country who use them and will build their future on the healthy start in life the NHS at its best can give, along with the security that it is there to help when the worst happens.

Above all, we need to address the feeling of hopelessness that the Osborne insecurity has created. Low and middle income families should see they have a strong future ahead. That sinking feeling that life is about to take a turn for the worse could stay with us for some time, unless Labour can show a better way.

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Alison McGovern is MP for Wirral South. She tweets @alison_mcgovern

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Photo: Michael Newman