The next time you speak to someone about politics, whether at your place of work, in your activism, to your partner or kids at teatime, remember to tell them something. Remember to tell them how ambitious the Labour Party is.

The Progress Third Place First conference is an opportunity to pool experience and learning for the benefit of all candidates and CLPs where we need to leap a candidate currently in third position to take the seat for Labour. I am in that position, so my ears are pricked up and ready to listen.

We are fighting to get back into government after only one term in opposition, having been in office for thirteen years up until May 2010. It’s a bold ambition but one that drives PPCs like a train engine, especially in marginal seats!

Electorally, Britain in May 2010 was like a newborn foal; stumbling, uncertain without the confidence to have elected a Tory majority even if it had decided it wished to jettison the comfort of Labour.

The UK’s performance on a host of metrics since 2010 has been risible, the last time that unemployment was at levels we have experienced over the last four years was the mid 1990s.

House prices have taken until July 2013 to recover their April 2010 levels, while Shelter reported in November 2013 that the UK had, over the previous year, built only 107,950 homes of the 250,000 required in England. It also noted a 26 per cent year-on-year decrease in affordable homes built.

Some GDP growth appears to have returned but there are serious concerns about the debt-pumped element of such growth and whether we’re returning to the bad old ways, or had ever moved on from them. Throughout this time, Britain’s national debt has continued to rise.

All of which should combine to present a compelling case against the Tory-Lib Dem coalition government, especially when combined with the reorganisation of the NHS. Labour’s consistent lead in the polls of around five to seven per cent suggests this is the case but is decisive enough to win outright?

Peter Kellner of YouGov has suggested that historically, this far out from a general election, Labour’s poll rating will be considerably better than is likely to be the case come election day. Additionally, those seats with a new Tory incumbent in 2010 will probably see a bounce of around two percent as well, which makes the figures a little tougher still.

So, the Third Place First conference is not only timely but also necessary. We must learn from each other’s CLPs and PPC experience if we are to realise our bold ambition and form a majority Labour government in 2015.

The conference is being held in Watford, my own constituency, which as well as a key three way marginal, is traditionally a bellwether seat. Since before the election of Labour in 1945, Watford has always swung the way of the nation, except in one general election. That election was in 1970, when an extremely popular incumbent Labour MP, Raphael Tuck, kept his seat by a teeth skin thin 76 votes as Edward Heath, along with his piano, was wheeled into Downing Street.

With such statistics in mind, I want to know of any experience other candidates have had in pushing their local advantage up decimal percentage point by decimal percentage point.

There are, of course, a huge number of areas to share information on; local campaigning techniques, community activism building, the application of national policy positions to local experience and quick tricks to bat back our opponents from the pseudo mainstream to the more alarming fringes – all of which are represented in our constituencies.

Third Place First is not simply a conference, it is a state of mind. I urge you to attend the event and help us all win for Britain in 2015. You can sign up for the event by clicking here.

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Matthew Turmaine is a councillor and Labour’s prospective parliamentary candidate for Watford

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