Let’s get stuck in

Today is the start of a process that will result in the manifesto the next Labour government will implement in office.

The launch of the 8 National Policy Forum Final Year Documents – the framework for discussion at an NPF meeting in July and then for a vote at conference – are the result of massive input from the party and communities right across the country.

Every one of these documents is rooted in the belief Ed Miliband has been articulating: we’re going to change the country for the better. That the failed experiments of too much state and too much market mean we can only transform public services if individual citizens and communities have far greater voice in decisions that affect them. We’ll not be tinkering around the edges, pulling a few levers from Whitehall. A One Nation Labour government is going to radically devolve power to local people to govern themselves. It’s this kind of politics that’s shaping the reviews we’ve commissioned as part of the policy report. Like the Local Government Innovation Taskforce report that launched this week.

These aren’t a bunch of big words in speeches. These are concrete things we can get done. Locally accountable schools with greater powers for parents to trigger inspections so they have a stake and a route to have their say. More powers for people to shape what’s opening on their own high street so we don’t see a bunch of betting shops rather than books shops. We’re going to create regional banks throughout Britain to help rebuild the economies in cities and regions.

To do all that, and more, we have to win in May 2015.

Historically, our party has sometimes got focused on abstract debates about theory without reference to the practicalities or plans to get stuck in when in office.

This isn’t one of those times.

Everyone, right across the party, is getting ready to win next year. You can see that in the phenomenal work of our field team in Brewer’s Green and our organisers right across the country. And it’s shining through in the way we’ve organized the manifesto process itself.

Angela Eagle has done an amazing job of opening up the process through the Your Britain site. It is the most transparent policy process the party has run, and it is one based on the idea that more people, having more involved, is something that makes us stronger.

We’ve had policy coordinators in every region, hosting events and hearing from people who’d never usually thinking of chipping in. Our organising is central to our policies, and our policies will be central to organising in communities before the election, and after the election.

Our policies will be focused on giving people power, so that politics isn’t something that is done to them, but something that people are doing themselves. We’ve worked really hard to run the policy process on the same basis.

Jon Cruddas is the Chair of Labour’s Policy Review