It is 10 years since my first real involvement in a general election. Five years since I ran a general election campaign as a volunteer. Three years since I began campaigning to be a candidate, while raising a young family and running my own business. Two years as the Labour candidate for Bury North. And I fell 378 votes short of becoming a Labour member of parliament.

This gave Bury North, marginal seat number 40 before the election, a near six per cent swing to Labour in May 2015. It is now number four and the most marginal Tory seat in the north-west, but it is still Tory. There were hundreds of other Labour candidates, volunteers and members who fought as hard for this election, only to be let down by a national political position. For us in Bury North to lose by such a fraction leads us to question the political weather we attempted to set nationally and the leadership. Today, the need for a Labour government has not gone away just because we lost. The need to explain what one is for is greater than ever.

I am convinced that it was our #FairDeal4Bury campaign that took us as close as we came against the national trend. It focused on five key areas of life: NHS Bury, Your Local Services, Bury’s Families and Communities, Business and Jobs in Bury and Our Young People. We keenly covered all aspects of each area and their relationship to Bury North, making clear my position, record or expertise as candidate on each of them. Furthermore, we offered ideas and engagement through casework on how I would perform as their Labour MP as someone with a business, a life and a young family away from politics.

I spent a lot of time personally speaking to local employers, business breakfast groups and working people living in marginal wards in our marginal seat. We ran street stalls, surveys, addressed rotary clubs, met with market traders and further education organisations along with high profile activities around Small Business Saturday. Local business people supported us with contributions for an office and supplies, complementing the full-time organisational and operational support provided by the regional party and the money I raised in the field. We were brilliantly supported by my union, the CWU.

Despite all this public engagement, we were always up against an assumption that Labour was anti-business. This read across to many as also being anti-private sector worker and too pro-welfare.

Throughout the campaign we were always trusted on the NHS. No one would suggest we spoke too little about the NHS. The problem was that it is all we appeared to want to speak about. Gripping our fists and loving the NHS will never win us a mandate to govern the country.

As a Labour businessman myself, I ask, why are we not a party with a greater deference to business? Not just education, but business and starting up in business should be our vehicle for social mobility. Social mobility is not just being about equal opportunity but repeated access to opportunity. For a long time the debate on social mobility has focused on the notion that equality of opportunity means everyone getting a shot at something. This is just one piece of the puzzle. Based on my own life experiences, especially in my business life, if I had only got one chance, equally with everyone else, I would have blown it. So much is made of achieving mobility through good education, the arts and relationships with our fellow citizens but good business and sound employment promotes social mobility and makes it possible. Labour should redefine its support for business with a belief in the transformative impact that good business providing good employment can have on an individual’s social mobility, providing repeat opportunities across society and increasing their economic freedoms.

At the election, Labour’s political direction said very little about the future economy we woulld help create. Any notion of ‘one nation’ fell well short when considering what people would do when they got up and went to work in the coming half-decade and beyond under a Labour government. We would change minimum wages, laws and taxes but said nothing of our design for decent jobs with an emotional investment and understanding in private job creation. Job creation is not about outsourcing the risk of public services to the private sector either – as the Tories believe. It is about a vision, a white heat revolution in pursuit of better and new. This is as much about how our universities and technical sectors work with our science industries as it is about improving the access for small business to the supply chains of big business. It is especially about helping more of the key moments to happen in a small company when they decide they can commit to a new member of the team and another draw on the payroll.

After some excellent work in government a decade ago, we forgot about skills, and said nothing on future high-growth sectors that a Labour government would help bring to their tipping points, back up or spread. These sectors include high-tech, creative and green industries along with a deep commitment to help start-ups of all kinds with an approach that helps share the risk of setting up your own business and does not just stake claims on successes through taxation.

A prospective Labour government can play a vital role in ensuring the best of British business and new ideas for a fresh economy and greater equality. The model of successful growth funding successful public services is not broken, it is just too narrow. Earning more as a country from a diversified economy at full capacity and improved equality is a better way to pay off the deficit than cutting through the bone. This argument surely presents us with an electorally attractive way back to economic credibility. So let’s outline a clear, enabling, pro-business argument as the prospective government. Let’s articulate a plan that addresses the needs of priority sectors and talent supply chains for growth industries; one that offers incentives, shares risk, identifies regional priorities and considers the distribution of industry; that improves small business lending, helps start-ups and their cash flow, and above all shows that we have got a deep commitment to business growth and new jobs. In doing so we have a chance to move away from the impression we give to the public of being judgemental, almost mistrusting, of success.

At this election, our proposition was all opposition. We spoke of all we would stop and little of what we would start. Our offer was a complaint. We rightly spoke of zero hours and wrongly said nothing to those working long hours. So as we jostle and jockey for a way ahead let’s make sure, well before next time, that we show we have the interests not just of those in need of a payday but those responsible for making payroll. Let’s grasp the risk and reward deal of private enterprise, harness it and help spread it as an evangelical, pro-worker, business-believing, Labour party. And commit to fairness and fortune for all.

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James Frith is the former candidate for Bury North. He is currently chief executive of All Together.

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This is an extract from the Fabian Society pamphlet Never Again: Lessons from Labour’s key seats

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Photo: Russell Davies