I want to begin by paying tribute to the work of Progress. And let me say this about the anonymous briefers who have sought to undermine Progress in recent times.

Never again are we going to put up with a culture of poisonous, destructive briefing in our party which tries to kill ideas. We say fight ideas with ideas; fight the Tories and the Lib Dems not members of your own party and movement.  And as Ed Miliband has done since he became leader let us encourage plurality. No individual or section of the party has a monopoly of wisdom.

In my speech today I want to sketch out how I see the new centre ground and the opportunities and challenges it presents for our party.

As I drafted this speech I thought of 3 people who through their stories personify what the centre ground has always been about and remains so today for me.

Too often politics is about the abstract not real people struggling with complex lives.

Firstly, my Dad. A lifelong socialist who lost his father to TB when he was only 8yrs old, left school at 15 to become an apprentice electrician and by his late 20s decided he wanted to better himself so set up a small manufacturing business. Despite his political principles when I reached the age of 11 he scraped the money together to send me to a fee paying grammar school. When in the early 80’s his business failed he suffered the indignity of seeing me temporarily sent home from school because he couldn’t afford to pay the fees.

30 yrs later at the age of 72 he picks my two teenage sons up twice a week  from the local voluntary aided state school rebuilt under Labours Building Schools for the Future programme. A school transformed through the leadership of a chair of Governors who 20 yrs ago as a successful businessperson made it his mission to turn a failing school into a centre of educational excellence.
I think of my friend “Quinny” in his early 50s, a blue collar skilled engineer who left school at16, has worked most of his life at BAE systems. The son of an engineer and cleaner who in the 80s was briefly seduced by Thatcherism till he realised they didn’t give a damn about working people like him. He and his wife Debbie, the daughter of publicans who have brought up their 4 kids to have aspirations and respect. Their eldest has just qualified as a doctor. The next child is studying French and International relations at St Andrews University. Their third child has Down syndrome and is at college striving to fulfil her potential. Their youngest is studying for his GCSEs at the local excellent comprehensive rebuilt with 7 million pounds of Labour Govt investment.  In his late 40s Quinny became a magistrate and Labour Cllr determined to use his life experiences to make his community a better place.
Finally, my constituent Geraldine now in her early 60s,a successful businesswoman who gave up her job 12 years ago to care full time for her grandson with autism so her daughter could go out to work and build a successful career. She not only cares for her family but runs a local charity offering a range of support services to disabled children and their families and is a ferocious campaigner to get statutory services to put the needs of disabled people and their families at the heart of their services.

These people in their own way are the throbbing heart of middle England who in reality care less about ideology and more about which politicians most empathise with their values of aspiration, fairness and responsibility.

I myself do not view the centre ground through the prism of polls or great intellectual tomes or theses. My perspective is rooted in the classically centre ground community where I have lived all of my life. Thatcherite in the 80s, then New Labour, now divided. And also my personal journey. I left college at 17 to set up a local charity working with people with learning disabilities and mental health problems, was elected as a local cllr for the ward where I was born, at the tender age of 23 in 1990. Became chair of the Social Services Committee a year later. Became chief executive of a local social care charity at the age of 25.Was elected to parliament for the constituency where I was born, raised and have lived all my life in 1997 still at the  age of 30, and have  had the privilege of serving my hometown constituency for nearly 15 years inc 9 years as a minister in a progressive Labour Govt  which did so much to improve our country. And now 18 months serving as a member of the shadow cabinet which shares a heavy collective responsibility to lead the renewal of our party after our devastating defeat in 2010. it was not me, but will almost certainly be my kids who will be the first Lewis’s to go to university.

So, what of the new centre ground?

Well firstly, those of us who come to praise not bury new Labour have to acknowledge 2012 is not 1994.  After all we are modernisers and therefore to cling to the past is a betrayal of everything we claim to believe in. So much has changed. The causes and  impact of the global financial crisis, the emerging new centres of economic and political power such as China and India, climate change, the new security challenge of fundamentalist terrorism allied with rogue states, demographic change, changing family structures and the  legacy, positive and negative of an unprecedented 13 yrs of Labour Government.  Ed Miliband is right to challenge any notion that we can simply make some minor adjustments to where we were in 2010 and we will somehow regain the trust of the electorate. Far more radical surgery is necessary as we strive to reconnect with the electorate.

So, what are the key questions the electorate expect us to answer if we are to regain support of a centre ground which unites traditional Labour supporters with non aligned voters and those who deserted us in 2005 and 2010. We must never go down the “blind alley” of choosing between these voters. Our task is to reassemble them as a coalition.

Ed Miliband has set us the task of facing up to these challenges.

Can we trust you with the country’s money?

What is the point of Labour when there is little money to spend?

Why should we take a risk and change the Government at a time of austerity?

Will you be on the side of those who work hard and play by the rules?

What hope can you offer our children and grandchildren?

Will you ensure the NHS, education system and police are fit for purpose?

Will you allow us control over our lives and those of our family or will you use the power of central Government to interfere in an overbearing way?

I don’t intend to answer all of these questions in detail today. I want to focus primarily on the need for Labour to have a new vision for both the economy and the state. Firstly, the New economy.

Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have made it clear that fiscal responsibility and a patriotic or active industrial strategy are key.

We have rightly warned that the Tory Led Governments cuts are too fast and too deep. Ed Balls has been vindicated in his warnings about the consequences of the Government’s failure to have a credible jobs and growth strategy.

But we also know if we were in Government we would not only be promoting our five point plan for jobs. We would be focusing on reducing the deficit, making tough choices and deciding where to make cuts. As Ed Miliband and Ed Balls have said protecting public services has to come before public sector pay rises and as we have said, it would be irresponsible to commit now to spending plans when we don’t know what we are going to inherit. However, the lowest paid should always be the first to receive any available support. The Government has already cut the Winter Fuel Allowance so that it provides less support. That cut to a universal benefit may be something we cannot reverse. outlook that we face we Of course, Ed Miliband and Liam Byrne were absolutely right to oppose this Tory led Government’s proposals to cut the benefits of cancer patients and families of disabled children because our belief in social justice and compassion means we would have found the cuts elsewhere.

So fiscal responsibility rooted in independent verifiable accountability is crucial to winning back the trust of the centre ground.

But so is our capacity to support sustainable new private sector jobs and growth. This will require us to pursue an active or as Ed Miliband outlined in his recent speech patriotic industrial strategy. Smart, active Government investing where appropriate and incentivising innovation, investment and skills so we can accentuate our strengths in a highly competitive global market. This does not suggest a return to picking winners, the mistaken subsidies of the 60s and 70s or the folly of protectionism. But it does mean backing British Business in the same way many Governments back their business sectors in countries across the world. It also means a revolution in the culture of Whitehall from administrative government to entrepreneur government.

Let us be clear the reason the Tory led Govt is paralysed when it comes to a plan for growth is ideology. Like his Tory predecessors George Osborne believes in laissez faire, leave it to the market economics. It is frankly astonishing that Vince Cable doesn’t understand this or is protesting differentiation while colluding with this cul de sac for our economy.

There may be a right time to cut the 50p top rate of tax in the future.  But it not when the squeezed middle and poorest in our society are carrying such a burden.

Finally, on the new economy Ed Miliband’s call for a more responsible capitalism chimes with many businesspeople I talk to. They share our outrage at the excessive remuneration which has been the cultural norm in financial services irrespective of performance or scale of challenge. They rightly believe in business and through the tax system risk and innovation should be rewarded. I think it is right we should give serious consideration to developing a corporate tax regime which incentivises and rewards those who take responsible risks, innovate and are willing to invest for the long term.

We should be clear that Labour will never reconnect with the centre ground if we are unable to attract significant support from people running businesses small, medium and large. Therefore, we must give our full support to Chuka Umuna’s in his efforts to develop this agenda in collaboration with businesspeople and their representative organisations. I would like to see shadow cabinet members and all Labour Mps spending quality time alongside businesspeople in their constituencies learning at firsthand about the day to day and strategic challenges they face and difficult judgments they often have to make. It is good that many colleagues have undertaken similar activities on the frontline of public services in the past alongside local NHS workers and police officers but it is more imperative than ever in these difficult financial times that we gain a better understanding of business, both SMEs and big corporations.

I want to turn now to the vision we should develop for a new state. Not the post war welfare state or the  state we reshaped during the Blair, Brown years but a new state which reflects the limits of public finances but also opens a historic new frontier for our values.

We should be the party which redistributes power from the state to the citizen with the same fervour as we have traditionally sought to redistribute income. We should unleash a new era of people power which has the power to transform our society. If we are honest as we rebuilt the institutions of the state in Government we should have given more weight to simultaneously empowering  citizens, families, local Government and communities to take more control over their lives and services.

Ed Miliband in his speech about responsibility and Liam Byrne in recent speeches have both rightly talked about the need for a new welfare state. In future, there has to be a greater correlation between contribution and return, work not idleness must truly pay and we must seek a much more integrated approach to education, training, employment, housing and benefits for 18 to 25 year olds. Ed Miliband’s plan for a new Real Jobs Guarantee announced on Friday is a major step forward.

Anyone who can work should work, although those who through sickness or severe disability are unable to work should know they will be treated with dignity by a Labour Government. We should make it clear the benefits cap recently introduced is here to stay. But on a locality by locality basis, benefits staff will have some flexibility to apply discretion where families especially children would suffer undue hardship. A reformed Welfare system should be at the core of a new social contract between Government, citizens. Local Government, other public bodies and businesses which clearly defines rights and responsibilities in a 21st century progressive Britain. A social contract which, alongside our vision, for a new economy should be the core of our offer to the British people at the next election.

On public services, Labour must never side with the forces of Conservatism. We must be the modernisers and reformers, But reform must be consistent with our values which is why Ed and Andy are right to be opposing with vigour the dreadful health bill that the Tories are hell-bent on forcing through parliament with Lib Dem support next week.
Let me some give examples of radical reform which are consistent with our values.

In social care and for some health conditions Liz Kendal who is doing a magnificent job  is right to reiterate our support for personal budgets which give control to people using services and their families so they can decide what support they want and need. This is more radical than the Tories who want to put resources and control in the hands of professionals not patients or those who use services.

Stephen Twigg who is doing a brilliant job as the new shadow Education secretary has proposed an extended school day and an enriched curriculum. He was absolutely right to make it clear that we would never have introduced free schools which are a distraction from the vast majority of schools. But equally once they are up and running he was right to make it clear we will not engage in ideological vandalism by seeking to close them down.

On the cadre of police commissioners about to be elected, Yvette Cooper is right to remind people we opposed them and thought the money would have been better spent on front-line police officers. Our commissioners will be the voice of victims and local communities seeking a new partnership with the police focused not on political priorities but on the people’s priorities. One of the reasons we vacated the centre ground in the latter years of our period in Government is that we failed to retain a laser like focus on the anti social behaviour and crime which destroys the quality of life of too many of our fellow citizens. We must never allow that to happen again.

I could go on to talk about how we must devolve more power from Whitehall and Westminster to local Government and local communities, radically reform Whitehall so it is focused on public policy goals not vested departmental interests every bit as insidious as energy and train company monopolies, embrace neighbourhood budgets and create a more central role for voluntary groups and community networks centred around faith, sport etc but that’s for another day.

I want to end by saying this Ed Miliband has given us a route map to reconnect with the new centre ground. Fairness in tough times rooted in personal, family and business responsibility. Patriotic industrial policy to support private sector jobs and growth. Standing up to vested interests without fear or favour and empathising with the daily pressures facing the squeezed middle.

But in reflecting on the challenges and opportunities Labour now faces he has also confronted us with a perennial centre ground truth.

Labour can only win if the mainstream majority who work hard, play by the rules and try t
do the right thing trust us with the nations finances and believe we share their positive aspirations for the future of their families, communities and country.
I want to conclude by saying this.
In recent weeks in as my capacity as shadow international secretary I have visited Tanzania and Chad.  In Tanzania I spent 24 hrs with a rural family living in a mud hut and engaged in a daily struggle simply to survive. In Chad I met mothers and grandmothers whose only concern was whether they would have enough food to give their children one meal a day.  They need a labour government in Britain to once again lead the world as Tony and Gordon did.  Writing off debt, increasing aid and creating the MDGs.

But the reality for the poorest in Britain and around the world is that labour as a party of protest is passionate but powerless.  We can only make a difference as a party of government.  And we will only ever be a party of government if we understand, capture and dominate the centre ground of British politics.

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Ivan Lewis is shadow secretary of state for international development and MP for Bury South