Why we must win the election

When locked in the toil of an election campaign it sometimes pays to lift your head from the minutiae of road groups, switchers and contact rates, to consider why it is we are sweating blood to win. (Though only briefly, you understand. Those leaflets are not going to bag themselves).

There is so much at stake here. Consider how the country has changed over the last five years. Admittedly, a few things have got better. We have made progress (faltering progress, but progress nonetheless) on some critically important infrastructure projects like new power stations and High Speed Two, and equal marriage means it is a bit easier to love who you want. But overall Britain feels like a less equal, more divided nation; a country in which it has become harder, not easier, for those with talent and determination to succeed.

And, looking ahead, there is such a stark difference between five more years of Tory government and the alternative plan for Britain under Labour.

We are Labour because we do not want to live in a country where the public services that support everyone are seen as an outdated burden to be sold off and cut; where a closed circle at the top gets special favours but everyone else has to tighten their belt and know their place; and where intolerance and the fear of the unknown is fuelled for short-term gain at the expense of building the openness and mutual respect that make our communities strong enough to succeed.

Ed Miliband has set out a vision of a country where people can regain their sense of hope for the future by pulling together, not by playing groups against each other. Faced with a mountain of Tory election cash and a national press that will not give Labour a fair hearing, it is up to us to go out and persuade voters on the doorstep that their future can be better than this.

We are up against a party that has done the wrong things in government, and done them badly. Our National Health Service is creaking at the seams because of the way the Conservatives and their Liberal Democrat accomplices wasted energy and resources on a reorganisation that failed to put patients first. Living standards are down because Tory obsession with helping those at the very top at the expense of everyone else has kept the economy bumping along the bottom for years. And our nation has turned in on itself at the very moment that threats beyond our borders require strong alliances to protect future security and prosperity. Imagine what they would do on all these fronts if they get another five years.

We work harder than the Tories; we have better candidates and better ideas for the future. This election is ours to win. It is an election we must win. Let’s get out there and give it our all (those leaflets still need bagging).

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John Woodcock MP is chair of Progress

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Photo: Helen Maybanks