UKIP have the wrong answers for Britain’s future. Our job is to get out and tell people

After an unusually quiet few weeks, Nigel Farage has resurfaced. What’s more, UKIP now claim to be the only party that ‘Believes in Britain.’ I’m on the campaign trail this week because I can’t let that stand.

We all know there is one choice at stake in this General Election: five more years of a Tory plan that is failing working families, or a Labour government with a better plan to make Britain work for the many rather than the few.

But we also know that Labour activists are facing different opponents in different electoral battlegrounds across the country. I saw it first-hand when I recently campaigned in 27 constituencies in 9 days across the 9 regions of England. If we want Ed Miliband to walk into Downing Street on May 8^th, then UKIP is one of the opponents that we need to overcome.

It’s a battle I’ve experienced in my part of the world.

UKIP were our main opponents when I fought my by-election four years ago. We faced a tough challenge from them again in the South Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner by-election last October.

Labour defeated UKIP then by taking them head-on with a strong campaign, showing that we will never take people for granted and always be a voice for the people we serve.

By contrast, the idea that only Farage’s party could speak for Britain is as offensive as it is flawed. Because whether you’re looking at their plans to privatise our NHS, erode workers’ rights, hand out unfair tax cuts to the richest, or ration opportunity for young people with a misguided return to grammar schools, there is nothing great or patriotic about what UKIP stands for.

Now we need to take that argument to every doorstep. As Ed Miliband has said, “We can take this lot apart and it’s time we did.”

That’s why I’ve been out on the doorstep this week supporting candidates on the frontline of the battle against UKIP – from marginal seats we need to hold on to like Great Grimsby and Dudley North to targets like Thurrock that we need to win back. I know thousands of Labour supporters are doing the same across the country.

This is a challenge for us to rise to. Not out of electoral practicality, but principle. Because UKIP is a direct challenge to our kind of politics.

We can see it in the surge of support for populist, right-wing parties sweeping across the Continent. Too many people feel left behind by economies that don’t work for them, cut off from opportunity and buffeted by the winds of globalisation. A great many more feel disillusioned and disconnected from politics as a result.

A man called Michael recently summed it up for me on a doorstep in Morecambe. He told me he was leaning towards backing Farage because he felt Britain’s only option was to shut the borders for five years. “We’ve got to get our house in order,” he said.

As we talked about Labour’s priorities however, it became clear that Michael didn’t feel any particular warmth towards UKIP. He just wanted to know how a new government would make life better for people like him – a gas fitter with a family to support.

These are big issues that only Labour can respond to – by being on people’s side in a rapidly changing world. We won’t overcome these challenges with the politics of blame or shouting from the sidelines.

But just compare that to Nigel Farage’s comments last week that it was a “fact of life” that women would always earn less than men after having children. I got into politics because I wanted to change injustices like the growing gender pay gap in our society, not accept them.

Where’s UKIP’s alternative to Labour’s plan to extend free childcare and better support men who want to be full-time dads? Britain need politicians who’ll fight for change, not shrug their shoulders when things get difficult.

With that spirit, we can build a more confident country where people feel more powerful in their everyday lives. Now that would be a Britain we can all believe in.