We need more working class people in our party at every level

What the party has not attempted, however, is to have its parliamentary representatives reflect the class composition of the electorate. A Labour candidature remains a vital stepping-stone for ambitious career politicians. Our MPs are still drawn mainly from relatively privileged backgrounds, the academically successful and with a disproportionate number having a public school education. That’s not their fault, and their contribution to our party will always be welcomed, but their exposure to and experience of the life courses of the majority of the electorate is necessarily limited if not absent. In language, lifestyle, culture and of course, income and wealth, they remain unrepresentative of the electorate.

When the PLP better reflected the occupations of the voters we elected former manual workers to parliament; miners, steelworkers, shipbuilders and engineers, skilled and unskilled. The jobs are telling. Even then the representatives from what were major ‘women’s’ occupations were in short supply; shop workers and those in domestic service.

We no longer tolerate barriers that work against women or ethnic minority members of our party playing their full part. Now’s the time to take a similar approach to ordinary working class people – regardless of gender or ethnicity – whose hard work and votes we’ve relied on and, too often in the past, taken for granted.

The accusation that all politicians and political party’s are the same, though false when we look at the policy, is made easy when the advocates for the various party’s all sound and look the same. UKIP policy, often lacking in substance and certainly damaging to the working class, seems to speak directly to people, even if it is a facade. This was attractive and fresh to some working class, traditionally labour, voters. The truth is, balance must be struck in the advocating of policy and the messaging. The Labour Party must speak to the working class and avoid pure political speak but also come across professional and as a party of government.

The 2015 election marked a break from the past – a disastrous one for Labour. Too few people who voted – and the 35% who didn’t bother – trusted the party to know what’s good for them and in their interests. Our best response to this lies in ensuring that the chasm between our representatives in parliament and the electorate is bridged. The only way to do that is through more working class people in our party at every level.