How can we build a thriving Britain?

To build a Britain that genuinely thrives I believe we need to build a stronger and fairer society. I believe we’ve got to:

1)      Tackle the root causes of division and injustice – low wages; a lack of affordable housing; a divided education system; a lack of genuine opportunities for many of our young; isolated and ignored older people; an unaccountable elite. Key steps to overcome these problems will include:

·         Ensuring “good work” for all

·         A bold plan to deliver secure and affordable housing for all

·         Doing our politics differently – challenging inequalities through taking action

2)      Develop an economy everyone has a stake in – we’ve got to see greater control of economy by us all through genuine worker representation on our board; new forms of ownership – co-ops and mutual companies; communities seeing the benefits of their labour through capital staying local –credit unions; regional banks; an investment and industrial strategy that creates jobs; state and business investment in high quality vocational career routes.

3)      Build strong communities – we’ve got to use the power of the state to strengthen civil society.  For example, let’s see schools as genuine community hubs and place a community organiser in every school. This also means doing our politics differently –  we’ve got to move power away from a narrow elite to our local communities and give people control over their lives, enabling them to control budgets and run a range of local services.

4)     Ensure everyone gets access to high quality public services – especially for our young and old. With many of our public services under attack either being privatised or ideologically cut I believe it’s time we developed a new public service covenant that’s proactively shaped and developed with you. Let’s develop a youth covenant, a care covenant to get explicit and clear about the level of service people can expect and the purpose of them. 

5)     Contribute to the wider world – I want to see us play a strong role in collaborating with nations internationally to:  hold big business to account; take a lead on addressing climate change by moving to a low carbon economy; ensure we contribute fairly to addressing the migration crisis; create a European Union that progresses our values and supports sustainable development across the rest of the world.