How to live in the 21st Century

Britain's future and the case for real change

We have to work out how to bridge the gap between individual aspiration and our common interest. How do we take back control over our lives? How can we turn ourselves from spectators of the world into participants who shape it?

There is a strong case for a ban on advertising to children under 12, so that the crucial years in a child’s life are as free as possible of the pressures of consumerism.

The new politics of hope must start with idealism and the belief that another world is possible; a world where we can get on, prosper and make the best of things. But also where the wealth, income and opportunity differences between the top and the bottom are reduced, leaving no one behind. Whether at home or abroad, no-one’s life should be compromised by the brute luck of birth. Instead, we need collective insurance against falling ill or failing through no fault of our own. More than ever, in the future we will need real social security against misfortune.

Images Utopianism has been given a bad name by those whose want everything to stay the same. But all that we hold dear started out as someone’s dream. The NHS, full employment and even the minimum wage were all initially decried as hopelessly utopian but people had the courage and the desire to struggle to make them a reality. The utopia we desire is a world where people are free, not just free from unjustifiable interference over their lives - but free to take the fullest possible control over their world by building and rebuilding the institutions that influence and shapes us. Our goal should be free people, not free markets.

This is the case for greater equality. Because we are different and all deserving of the right to make the most of our lives, we need the resources to ensure this can be achieved fairly. In theory, we all have the chance to rise to the top, but the reality is that most of us don’t have the means to do it. Too many people are denied their freedom because they are denied the resources to be truly free.

The only basis for true freedom is fairness. But fairness can only be achieved though democracy. Through democracy we meet each other as equal citizens through processes in which all our voices are valid. If our lives are out of control, democracy is the means by which we can reassert influence. We have too little control because others - usually located in politics, business and the media - have too much, and they must be held to account. The very act of working together to shape our lives transforms our aspirations and ambitions, helping us come alive to new possibilities and creative talents. By working as equals with others we start to fulfil our human potential.

It would be easy to be overwhelmed by the scale of the changes we need to make, but there are plenty of areas in which new policies and approaches would point Britain in the right direction: a direction in which our society becomes more equal and therefore free, the quality of our lives is determined by us not for us, and we reach agreement about where markets and consumerism work in our interests, and where they should be kept at bay.

We need, for example, to move from demanding that employers pay a minimum wage to insisting on a living wage - so that people can be sure that work enables them to live on the same basic terms as everyone else - and companies do not compete by racing right to the bottom of the labour market. We should insist on the right to meaningful flexible working and use regulation to put an end to Britain’s imbalanced long hour’s culture. Even more ambitiously, given the fact that few people have a real say in how their organisations are run, we should examine how to bring some democracy to our working lives.

Utopianism has been given a bad name by those who want everything to stay the same. But all that we hold dear - the NHS, full employment and even the minimum wage - started out as someone’s dream.

To draw an important line that the ever-more insatiable market cannot cross, there is a strong case for a ban on advertising to children under 12, so that the crucial development years in a child’s life are as free as possible of the pressures of consumerism. To ensure that Britain’s politics and culture are open to new ideas and a diversity of voices, we need to reform our laws on media ownership. In another area, we should ensure that companies do not shift their operations and sack their people according to which country charges the lowest tax rates by beginning a dialogue with our European partners about harmonising corporation tax across the EU.

The tax system must address the fact that Britain has become so unequal. One innovative idea is a tax on land, to get to grips with the fact that big property owners receive huge windfalls through no effort of their own. Addressing this issue would begin to stabilise house prices, slow speculation and rebalance wealth inequalities. There is also a strong argument to be made for a new top rate of income tax, pitched at a level that would begin to correct one of our society’s most glaring imbalances: that as things stand, those at the very top of our society pay a much smaller proportion of their income in tax than those at the bottom.

These ideas are meant only as a beginning of a hugely important conversation about the future of Britain, but there are plenty of other changes demanding to be made. We need to ensure that solving Britain’s housing problem is not subject to the ups and downs of the property market, and instead use the strength of national and local government to make sure all of us have a decent and dependable place to live. Instead of the only ‘reforms’ of our public services being about forcing them to adopt the ways of the market, we have to think about introducing new ways of involving people in the services they use, and ensure that education and healthcare are things delivered with people rather than just to them. And as climate change becomes a reality, we need to phase out our reliance on oil, address the shocking state of public transport outside major cities including our decrepit and extortionate rail system and accelerate the development of sustainable energy alternatives.

Finally, one set of changes would arguably set the stage for everything else. When it comes to our system of politics Britain needs not only to move towards a fairer electoral set-up in which every vote counts, but to end the dominance by central government of our lives, and revive and democratise the way that our cities, towns and villages are run.

There are countries and societies from which we can learn a lot not least the social democratic states of Northern Europe – that are further towards the good society than we are. They are fairer, more democratic, more equal and have lower rates of crime, social breakdown, debt and illness than we do. We are too unique a country to simply copy them; but we need to understand what we can take from their example.

Our challenge is to transform a demoralised society into a remoralised nation and unlock our potential as individuals by acting together. If politics is to inspire us it has to be about more than good administration and competence. People are crying out for a different quality of life, real well-being and sustainability. When our principles define what we think is practical, there is no limit to what our country can achieve. We need to start a debate about the big things that matter to us and how we can build the kind of lives and society that we want.

Political leaders are reluctant to take the lead. They play it safe, caught in the trap of electoral timidity when the moment demands bravery. This is not a surprise; history teaches us that lasting changes in our lives: from the vote and the NHS, to greater gender equality – were not handed down from on high by benevolent politicians, but fought for by millions of people, convinced that the time for change had come. This is the nature of democracy. Politicians will be cautious until they realise that there is a real groundswell of opinion for change. But once they know, they will fall over each other to deliver it.

We cannot wait for our leaders to do it. It's up to us to do it ourselves. There has always been a progressive consensus waiting to be assembled. It is time to make it happen.

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