One Nation is not a slogan, it’s an idea whose time has come…again

It was said that Benjamin Disraeli’s real political genius lay in his ability to teach his party. The original ideologue of the One Nation philosophy managed to turn the Tory Party into an election-winning machine by a commitment to modernisation.

During the course of the nineteenth-century, he himself changed from a creature of the aristocratic Young England circle to the Prime Minister who secured the Second Reform Act, delivering working men the vote in cities across Britain. In a century of bewildering change, he kept his party focused on the changing nature of society – and the need for a credible political response.

Is it stretching the One Nation concept too far to see Ed Miliband’s Progress speech as being part of a similar process? No. This was a welcome wake-up call to the Labour movement to confront the new realities which face us at the next election. Just we changed as a party in the 1990s because the challenges we faced then were very different to those that had existed in 1974, so the challenges we face in 2015 are very different to 1997: falling living standards; stagnating wages; structural unemployment; and a growing mood of anti-politics.

And the old answers of just redistributing the riches of the City of London and embracing full-throttle globalisation no longer hold. In essence, Ed told Labour to address the political conundrum of the modern era – how to deliver social democratic policies and turn Britain around in an age when there is less money around

Ed and the shadow cabinet have already started delivering a coherent answer as befits a party of solutions, not protest. In policy terms, a renewed focus on skills and training – with an iron commitment to parity between vocational and academic education ( backed up by the Technical Baccalaureate); a reformed banking system to spread funding outside the south-east; an industrial policy following George Cox’s recommendations on delivering long- term growth; and a progressive immigration strategy based on secure borders and ending the exploitation which undercuts the wages of workers already here .

These are new policies built around a different vision of political economy. As Ed said on Saturday, we have more work to do – to ensure the party understands the ambition of this new settlement and the country buys it. If we succeed, both Labour and Britain can prosper together again. One Nation is not a slogan, it’s an idea whose time has come…again.

Tristram Hunt is the Labour MP for Stoke Central, and a Shadow Education Minister