Today’s autumn statement from George Osborne was another missed opportunity to speak to the majority of people outside of the Westminster bubble. In particular, it failed to address that issue which resonates most strongly of all in those areas called ‘Rustbelt Britain’ by the Economist magazine: the need for nation-building.

Both the coalition and the last Labour government have used the concept of ‘nation-building’ as a cornerstone description of recent foreign policy. Nation-building is a laudable aim, but often ends in failure because of different visions of how the populations of these nations actually want their country to be built. Too often, the nation-builders can provide the hardware for building, or rebuilding, a nation: parliament buildings, hospitals and police stations, but the software that is required to enable the hardware to work: people with the right skills, attitudes and commitment to the nation-building process, either do not exist or are in short supply.

Without the right software, expensive hardware is pointless. Today’s statement failed to meet the opportunities presented to England by the Smith commission: the urgent need for and opportunities inherent in the task of nation-building.

Meaningful devolution of power and resources in England is now inevitable; the status quo cannot stand and Westminster’s dominance of our economic and political life has now reached the beginning of the end. Wales and Northern Ireland will make their voices heard, but the most urgent questions now face an over-centralised England. Ask not for whom Big Ben tolls.

The opportunities now facing England – particularly that peripheral, forgotten England home to our rugby league towns and lower league football cities – will not be realised by change defined simply by English votes for English laws. Such an approach does not begin to address the scale, type and pace of change that England now requires. In the process of nation-building in England, our economy can be rebalanced: not simply between the public and private sectors but geographically, too. As the member of parliament for the most remotely accessible constituency from Westminster, this cannot come soon enough.

Jon Cruddas, addressing the Institute of Government last week, made plain the scale of this nation-building challenge. He said ‘…the disruption of technological change … has unseated whole industries and workforces.’

Cruddas continued ‘Deindustrialisation and globalisation have transformed our class system and left our country scarred by dispossession. Millions have experienced falling living standards and stagnant wages. Change has brought insecurity. People feel abandoned, and disenchanted by party politics. They are losing confidence in the ability of our public institutions to serve the common good. Many believe that government is not interested in the things that matter to them. Never has government felt so inadequate, nor our politics so small.’

The analysis is indisputable – and nothing in today’s autumn statement came close to recognising the churning political ground beneath our feet. Cruddas has called for a fundamental reimagining of the way in which the whole of Britain is governed as a way of securing service improvement and saving money in an age where public money is increasingly hard to find. Critically, speaking on the day the Smith commission was published, Cruddas called for a new, radical devolution settlement for England.

Britain is currently in the grip of a national nervous breakdown, threatened with a peculiar form of balkanisation in the shape of internal separation and separation from the European Union. The opportunity for us to reimagine England is not just apposite, it is now entirely necessary.

The lessons of the Scottish referendum campaign, mirrored in the recent success of the United Kingdom Independence party is that the market for big political ideas is growing. Osborne’s statement illustrated perfectly the small nature of his politics. It is self-evidently true that the divisions between the left and right are real and significant, but a potentially greater intellectual political divide is now on the horizon. This divide is between those people and politicians who understand the future and those who do not. Those who want to embrace the pace and scale of technological change and who want to harness it for the benefit of society and the individuals that comprise society, and those who do not.

Take a step outside of Westminster and feel the churning ground. Osborne’s Lilliputian politics is not up to the task ahead; we need a bigger politics.

Following the Smith commission, the next big political idea is the project of nation-building and the reimagining of what our country is, how it looks and who it serves. Nation-building: the single most important task facing the next government.

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Jamie Reed MP is the Labour member of parliament for Copeland. He tweets @jreedmp

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 Photo: Ewan McIntosh