My New Year’s resolution? Get out of Westminster

This week Ed Miliband kick-started Labour’s General Election campaign and our effort to achieve 4 million doorstep conversations by Polling Day. Next week I’m packing a bag, hitting the road and getting started.

It was 70 years ago this year that a Labour government came to office in an election that shaped our national destiny. We all know how it led to the Welfare State, a million new homes, the creation of our National Health Service, and more.

Then as now, our leader led Labour’s campaign from the front.

As the 1945 election approached, Clement Attlee got in his car and started driving around the country with his wife Violet. Together they covered over 1,300 miles in their little Austin Seven, stopping in six or seven places a day to rally support, often finishing close to midnight.

I know thousands of Labour activists will be doing their bit in the same spirit over the coming months. With the focus rightly shifting away from an increasingly zombie Parliament, I want to do mine too.

It’s why I recently wrote a book with colleagues called Why Vote Labour. It sums up Labour’s plan for a better Britain – a more confident country where people feel more powerful in their everyday lives. An argument for how we can build an economy that works for the many, a good society and a better politics.

But I would never written that book if it was only going to sit on the shelf. I wanted it to be debated and discussed. With only 16 campaigning weekends left until Polling Day, I now want to take that debate across the country.

Over the coming days I’m going to be campaigning in nine regions over nine days, covering more than 900 miles. I’ll be knocking on doors, talking to people, and supporting our fantastic parliamentary candidates.

I’ll be travelling the length and breadth of England, visiting two, three or more target seats a day – just as I did inBrighton last year. By the end I hope to visit 30 of the key battlegrounds that will decide who walks into Downing Street on May 8th.

Above all, I hope it highlights what Labour is trying to achieve – something no other party is trying to do. Win for the whole country.

Labour is the only genuine national party fighting to win in every corner of Britain – from Plymouth and Dover on the south coast all the way through England, Wales and into Scotland.

That naturally means our campaign faces different challenges in different communities. Traditional fights against our traditional opponents, but also new fights against new opponents.

I’ll be visiting many seats that swung Conservative in 2010 where people now feel let down by David Cameron and betrayed by Nick Clegg. But I’ll also be going to places where other parties are seeking to capitalise on the discontent generated by this Government’s abominable record.

So I’m looking forward to conversations with voters concerned about issues like climate change and human rights about why voting Green will only let the Tories in through the back door. Or talking to people about why UKIP offer only a broken vision of the past and nothing for our country’s future. And I’m braced for many more conversations with people who are fed up all the parties and convinced that our problems have outgrown our politics.

The popular wisdom of 2015 so far is that our politics is fractured beyond repair. I don’t believe that, but I do believe that Labour is the only party that can bring Britain together.

Labour has always been at its best when we’ve put our party at the service of the nation. Our job is to show people the difference we will make to their lives with Labour in Government and Ed Miliband as our Prime Minister.

When I’m feeling knackered over the coming days, I hope that’s what will keep me going. See you on the #Labourdoorstep.

Dan Jarvis MP is the Shadow Justice Minister and the editor of ‘Why vote Labour 2015.’ He’ll be tweeting updates from his tour around the country @DanJarvisMP.