The long-term challenges that government faces will be embraced by Labour

The Autumn Statement was a huge missed opportunity. It looked only to the general election, and not towards Britain’s future.

Much has already been made of the chancellor’s attempt to distract people from the government’s broken promise to balance the books by the end of this parliament. Yet even more troubling is the government’s lack of imagination and ambition for a credible programme to lead Britain back to sustained prosperity, in which everyone fairly shares.

Where were the long-term reforms to our economy that will help businesses create good quality jobs in every area, which are central to getting the deficit down and improving people’s living standards? Where was the vision of a reformed and not simply smaller state, that will ensure our schools and other public services play their full part in getting the country back on its feet?

The paucity of the Conservative vision for Britain leaves a vacuum, which Labour will respond to with its own, more compelling, blueprint for a better future.

Today we will be holding an event in parliament to discuss the long-term changes that are sweeping the country, and the need for a future government to do far more to acknowledge and address them.

Many communities are already experiencing huge social and economic changes, and these are set to accelerate in the years ahead. Britain’s population is ageing, with the number of people aged over 80 set to double from three to six million by 2030. Technology is advancing at lightning speed, creating the potential to transform the way we work, communicate and access services but which also threatens to render obsolete a host of jobs on which middle income families currently rely. And pressure on resources is increasing too, as emerging economies become global powers. Britain’s place in the world has never been static yet the speed by which nations like China and India are rising means the global landscape is changing faster than ever before. That brings with it great opportunities, but also great risks.

Political parties can either seek to reject and counter these forces of change or embrace them as inevitable and seek to shape and harness them for good. Whether it be founding the welfare state in the 1940s, Harold Wilson’s mission to use the white heat of technology in the 1960s, or the last Labour government’s programme to renew our public services through investment and reform, a century of history has taught us that Labour succeeds when we match an understanding of how the world is changing with a coherent vision to improve people’s lives.

Similarly, governments both Labour and Tory have failed when they seem to be railing against what is happening around them without presenting credible solutions.

That sense of impotency is at the heart of the public’s current lack of faith in government and politics. They doubt the ability of any political party to deal with what the world is throwing at them, and they are angry. Politicians may gain temporary approval by joining the chorus against a particular issue and promising measures like reducing immigration to the tens of thousands or stopping free movement within the European Union. But the public are not daft: ultimately, they know when they are being told what they want to hear by someone who has no hope of delivering. And each broken promise leaves them more embittered and our country more fractured.

In place of the politics of retrenchment and division, Labour under Ed Miliband will show how government can equip people for the decades ahead. Rather than pretending things can go on as they are, a future Labour government must embrace the challenge of making Britain better when there is little public money to spare.

As Jon Cruddas has argued in Labour’s policy review, this will entail a transformation of our public institutions as part of a new deal between citizens and the state, which gives people more power and control over the services they use. It will also mean re-thinking our social security system so it is geared to helping people get ready for the jobs of the future. And it will need an end to the Conservatives’ introspective little Englander attitude that is diminishing Britain on the world stage and putting us at risk of us being left behind, out of step with an increasingly inter-connected world.

This is not simply a programme for the next five years of government. It is the work that must be done now to ensure the decades ahead can be the best the British people have ever experienced, rather than the era in which our country’s greatness is diminished forever.

– ‘Laying the Foundations for a Labour Century’ is edited by Liz Kendall MP and John Woodcock MP and is available online here.