Modern life is rubbish – We need to put Work and Home at the heart of everything we do

“Work and home is what One Nation is about – family life, how people live everyday life.”

That’s what Jon Cruddas – the man who will in all likelihood write Labour’s next manifesto – told the Guardian the party’s policy review is focused on. And it sounds so simple – doesn’t it? Critics will say it’s too simplistic a definition (and they’d be right – I’m cherry picking here), but it’s also a brilliant example of the distance between most politicians and the everyday lives of their constituents. People talk about work and home all of the time, but how often do politicians?

If you ask your friends, your colleagues, your parents, what they want from life – and what matters to them – a few trends are likely to emerge. People will say that they want to spend more time with their families and want somewhere affordable to live that they can call their own. They might say that they want to be paid better at a time when the cost of living is rising and wages are squeezed, or if they aren’t working, they might want help finding secure, permenant work – and if possible, a career not a McJob. They might talk about a safe environment for their children, or worry about why their adult children can’t find work. They might talk about the insecurity of life for older people on low pensions or in social care. Or they might ask why in one of the world’s richest economies, millions will have to wait until they’re 40 before they can buy their own home – if they can ever afford to at all. As Blur said – twenty years ago – modern life is rubbish. It’s still rubbish now, for all too many.

Your friends and colleagues are unlikely to cite either a referendum on Europe or public service reform as what they really desire in life – unless they’re a policy wonk or a complete and utter political anorak.

Work and home are the two places where every single person in Britain spend the vast majority of their lives, but remarkably little time is spent in the rarified atmosphere of Westminster talking about how the quality of those two experiences can be improved. Often politicians of all stripes have preferred to stay out of the workplace for fear of stifling business and out of the home for fear of being accused of nanny-statism. But that simply means that politics has left the battlefield, allowing globalisation, neoliberalism and the other trappings of modern life to trample home-life and work-life in their wake.

A Labour Party that returned to first principles – back to basics if you will – would focus on the reality of modern life. Insecure, exhausting and constrained. My generation, for example, those following in the wake of the baby boomers (and who will have to clean up after them) no longer have jobs for life or the guarantee of a home (social or private) to call our own. Instead, many of those I went to school with are stuck in call centres, or working zero hours contracts in supermarkets. They will struggle to ever have a home of their own. Where is the promise of a safe and secure home and work life for them. We are some way from work-life balance here…

Yet it’s not all doom and gloom. The early whispers from the policy review suggest that “work and home” isn’t just a phrase, it’s the grounding on which Labour’s policy is being built – fair pay through a living wage, a jobs guarantee, significant levels of home building and a refocusing on the role of the family in care.

But if Labour is to offer something to the public in 2015 that truly resonates, work and home will have to be absolutely at the heart of everything we do. No exceptions.