‘How do we transform our nation? It’s written on our membership cards’

Wars and wildfires on the news, old alliances fraying via twitter, the food shop feeling ever more unaffordable, hatred constantly beamed through our tiny screens. All of us can see, hear, and feel the certainties of the old Britain crumbling. We’re not in the middle of a storm, we are in the midst of a hurricane. Everything we hold dear is threatened while our nation is dividing from a united whole into weaker parts.

But we – as Labour MPs from the broad centre – will not passively accept our nation fracturing and falling. Instead, we step up to this challenge with courage and conviction. That is why we have come together to do the hard thinking on how we meet this moment and build a stronger nation true to our values. We set this out in our Fabian Society pamphlet Common Endeavour.

Our central argument is this – while the old world may be fading, we progressives are the only ones that can step up to build the new. It is our founding values matched with deep thinking that can guide us at this moment. As set out in Clause IV, on the back of our membership cards:

“By the strength of our common endeavour, we achieve more than we achieve alone”.

READ MORE: ‘Both Farage and Polanski are wrong about Britain – it is not what divides us that defines us’

In our fractured world, the strength of our common endeavour is more important than ever. If we stand together, we can withstand the hurricane and build a stronger nation from it. But if we divide into our weaker parts, we will be blown away.

Consider where we are today. An affordability crisis, decades in the making, is causing people to draw inward, away from one another. Populists from across the globe are exploiting this crisis to divide us further. They argue for more cuts to stop funding going to “those people” over there, which then lead to a downward spiral: a weaker state feeding even more division. Divided nations are finding it ever harder to confidently assert their interests in this new era of ‘Great Power Politics’. Unaffordable lives, a less capable state, and declining solidarity make us weaker, more divided and unable to protect our position in the world. These are the great interlocking challenges that we must meet in this moment.

To do so takes hard thinking and a commitment to our values.

Strength from our common endeavour is the value that has underpinned all successful Labour governments through history, especially at moments of peril. From Britain’s darkest hour in 1940 to the defeat of fascism by Bevin’s alliance of labour and capital; from blitzed out cities to building the welfare state; from four hundred years of turmoil to peace in Northern Ireland. All seemingly impossible achievements stemmed from us uniting with courage, compassion and the conviction needed to build a stronger nation.

Values, when matched with hard thinking, have helped this government make historic achievements. The largest energy transition since we stopped burning wood; extending the compassion of the state to children living in dire poverty; ripping up the arcane planning rules that have stifled our country; and shifting the balance of power decisively towards workers and renters. We are proud of this government and our Prime Minister.

But there is more for us collectively to do. We have had the space to do the deep thinking needed to meet this moment, producing ideas, refined by debate, to help define a vision that can be clearly communicated to the British public. That is what we, as Labour MPs, have done in Common Endeavour.

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Consider how our approach to the affordability crisis can be seen as an example of our values in action. Our Labour values are this: to make sure every person can live a good life. And to do this, we must make life affordable for all.

But to make life affordable for all, in pursuit of our values, we need deep thinking too. Since the 1980s, we’ve been living in a capital-based, London-led economy, where growth went to those who could get jobs working with new information technologies, clustered in the greater London area. Skyrocketing house and asset prices meant holders of wealth became wealthier while others were locked out of prosperity. Rising housing and energy costs make life unaffordable for all.

If we want all to share in prosperity, we must help every person and place share in producing it, by creating an economy that is worker-based and community-led. We are doing this by helping to create good, well-paying jobs for all outside London, investing to get costs down, providing universalist social security, and giving places outside London the powers and cash they need to thrive.

Making life affordable helps to unite this nation, with each of us having a stake in our nation, because it has a stake in us. A nation where we produce prosperity by our common endeavour, is a nation that can stand together, united and stronger.

These are values that our opponents stand against with their embrace of ethnocratic division and plutocratic Thatcherism. Their values will make us weaker by dividing us ever further. They would have us draw away from like-minded allies in Europe and leave us more dependent on mad fossil fuel-obsessed dictators from abroad. And they’d indiscriminately deport our friends, neighbours, and those that sit by our relatives’ bedsides as they suffer. They’d make our nation weaker, because they do not think we achieve more together than we achieve alone.

Our political opponents are circling, looking to exploit the dangerous and difficult times we are living in. But we, as progressives, will not shy away from this moment. Instead, we face it head on with the compassion of our values matched with the confidence that comes from hard thinking. Previous generations of Labour MPs, facing perilous times like we do today, built a stronger nation by uniting our nation in one Common Endeavour. So will we. 

The pamphlet Common Endeavour has been published by the Fabian Society.

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