There is a dangerous fallacy commonly held by many in Westminster that the south-west of England is a straightforward fight between the Liberal Democrats and the Tories. Thanks to the ascendancy of United Kingdom Independence party you can now throw in a bit of purple to the fight but, apparently, it is not one where Labour is involved. Not only is such an attitude incorrect, it represents a perilously blinkered worldview that could all but rule out a future Labour government.

Plymouth, where I was a candidate this year, is a straight Labour-Tory fight. Precariousness and change are now commonplace in Plymouth. In an ever more connected world it is not uncommon to feel ever more alone and isolated. The old certainties of left and right are fading. A full-time job no longer means you can afford to pay the bills or pay for childcare. Securing a dockyard apprenticeship no longer means a good job for life and, with further defence cuts hanging over the city, more job losses will surely follow. Forty per cent of people in Plymouth Sutton and Devonport rent in the private sector – higher than in most areas outside London. Here Labour was squeezed to the left by the Greens and to the right by the Tories. Ukip’s populist positioning meant they ate into our vote on both the left on immigration and the right on issues like the economy. Whereas many Ukip voters who switched from the Tories went back home in May, those more recent switchers from Labour did not and our data collection was not sophisticated enough to spot this in time.

All too frequently, instead of seeking to understand why we were losing lifelong Labour voters to Ukip and address that issue, the party nationally adopted a knee-jerk approach and hid a reasonableness and balance on policies like immigration behind awkward PR tricks like the infamous ‘controls on immigration’ mug. It felt like too little too late and lacked the authenticity our voters were rightly demanding. Re-engagement with communities who are falling away from us takes time, energy, grassroots activism and listening, not triangulation, tokenism and Toryism.

Labour gambled that in exposing the uncertainty in people’s lives and the fragility of the recovery, voters would believe Ed Miliband and Ed Balls’ prescriptions would be better for their families than those offered by David Cameron and George Osborne. The absence of a consistent economic narrative and an over-belief that a Labour lead on the NHS would trump a larger lead for the Tories on the economy hit our vote hard in marginals. When it came to the crunch it was a case of better the devil you know with Cameron than the uncertainty of change with Miliband.

Despite Plymouth Sutton and Devonport being a top target seat, I lost count of the times I was told by advisers to shadow ministers that Plymouth was ‘too far away to visit’. It is only too far away if there is a narrow geographical constraint on your thinking or a self-defeating requirement for Members of Parliament to be back in parliament for the evening vote. Many Labour figures did make the visit and their support meant a lot to me and my volunteers.

When the storms of 2014 washed away the railway line at Dawlish and with it our sole train line to the rest of the country, the south-west’s sense of isolation came to the fore. This is where Labour’s one nation approach should have come into its own by leading calls for the south-west to have its railway line upgraded as part of Labour’s bold infrastructure plan. The Tories seemed to have no such problems with a veritable spending glut around the region’s marginal seats. They had embraced pork-barrel politics and the voters liked it: the Prime Minister promised a new stadium for Cornwall on one trip, new trains on another. In contrast Labour announced that a vital road upgrade in the south-west would be paused to pay for a freeze in rail fares.

There is little doubt that the Tories were held to a different standard by the media because they were seen to have fiscal credibility. Any unfunded spending commitments by Labour would have further damaged our credibility. It was Labour’s failure to grasp the nettle of fiscal credibility in 2010 that cost us the opportunity to match the Tories’ uncosted spending spree in 2015.

Labour must learn from these episodes not by embracing unfunded spending commitments but by being serious about our economic mission and not just where Labour seats are plentiful and the lie of the land familiar, but where it is not and where we have to win. Would a commitment to a new train line have won the election for Labour in Plymouth? Probably not, but it would have helped with Tory majorities so slight.

The grievances and isolation of the west country are not paranoia – we are being ignored by government. Labour must first recognise that and secondly act upon it. Our next manifesto must be unapologetic about embracing regionalism, investment-led growth and devolution of powers to cities and regions.

Winning back trust amongst Plymouth’s traditional Labour voters who voted Ukip in May is a task that will not be successful if we do not overhaul our understanding of why people deserted us. That starts with genuine conversation where Labour does more listening than talking. Restoring faith in Labour will take time and our technical coding of voters is patently insufficient to take voters on that required journey. We will win back their trust by accepting the validity of their vote in 2015, listening and understanding to their concerns and then jointly formulating responses that will address those issues.

From Plymouth in the south-west to Thurrock in the south-east we need a new strategy for all of the south. Token efforts and awkward attempts to ‘translate’ Labour policies to make them fit must end. Our policies need to be built from communities upwards, not Westminster down. Marginal seats come in all shapes and sizes, some near to London, some further away. Whether we call our approach ‘one nation’ or some other formulation, we have to be a truly national party and that includes valuing the south-west as much as any other region. Without Plymouth returning two Labour MPs instead of two Tory MPs in 2020, the next leader of the Labour party should content themselves with being leader of the opposition and that alone. With Plymouth, and cities like Plymouth turning red they could be prime minister.

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Luke Pollard is the former candidate for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport. He is currently  director at Corporate Reputation Consulting

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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: Manu