Ed Miliband, Cabinet Office Minister, spoke to Labour Party Conference on Saturday 20 September.

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We meet here in tough times for our country, and tough times for our party.

But as we have watched the financial problems of the last week unfold, we in this room know our responsibility – our responsibility not to focus on our anxieties for our party, but to focus on the needs of our country.

And so on this the first day of our Conference, let’s resolve that it is time to stop looking inwards and look outwards.

And when we see the financial instability around us, we know what needs to be done.

We need to take action to bring stability back to the financial markets.

We will ensure the regulation that is needed to make markets work effectively.

And we have to ensure that responsibility must be not just a slogan but must apply all the way up our society and that must include the financial services industry.

And the reason we’re best placed to sort out this problem is that we understand a free-market dogma has no answer to a situation like this, but that markets need rules to protect the public interest.

But there will come a time when these storm clouds pass, and we need to show we stand for the big causes in our society – big causes that need Labour idealism.

You see, I think that our best chance of re-election is on the basis not of competing brands but of a competing vision.

And the next Labour manifesto will set out that vision: a country more open than it is now, fairer than it is now, and more equal than it is now.

I think of the people I have met, and the causes we must fight for.
 
I think of the teenager from my constituency who I met last year, the grandson of a miner. He told me University wasn’t for him, and I’ve thought often about the conversation I had with him: he wasn’t going to University not because he didn’t have the ability, but because in our unequal society, he didn’t have the networks, influences and support.

For him and for every kid across the country with potential and ability, we have so much more to do to live up to our ideal of equal life chances for all.

He needs a government that believes that kids in my constituency deserve as much of a chance as those in private schools.

He needs a government willing to back the commitment with money pre-school, at school and after school and to ensure everyone in the community—schools, universities, businesses—reaches out and nurture talent wherever it comes from.

I think of the nurse from Bristol I met last week. She works 45 hours a week, her husband’s been on nights for ten years, and she told me about the shift system for looking after their kids. For her, and for every family across this country struggling to cope with the stresses of modern life, we have so much more to do to show we really value families.

We are not at the end, but at the beginning of our journey to a family-friendly society: we have more to do for moms to have more time off, more so that dads have time with their kids, and there is affordable childcare there at the time people need it.

I think of the elderly man who came to my surgery. His wife had died the previous Sunday, still waiting for the help she needed at home so she could lead a dignified old age. He came to see me not because I could do anything for him, but because he wanted to make sure it would not happen to others. For every person, young and old, we have so much more to do to ensure the longer life is a dignified life.

And so a century after the pensions system came into being, because a progressive government accepted that that there are risks too big for individuals to bear on their own, we know we need equal ambition for long-term care for the elderly.

And the biggest cause of all: for all of us, and the generations yet to be born, who face the risk of climate change, we have so much more to do to meet our obligations to sustain our world.

We all need a government which understands we must reshape markets and change our whole view of environmental policy so it is not an add-on but is central to our economic policy, our energy policy, our social policy, our urban policy, our transport policy too.

And you know, some people have been asking in the last week what direction we want to take the country. I tell you, we are crystal clear about the direction for this government, we are crystal clear about the big causes we need to fight for: genuine social mobility and equal life chances for all. Families having time to spend with each other. A dignified old age. A planet preserved for future generations.

These are the big causes we will fight for.

Now some people will tell you that there is a pendulum in politics which inevitably swings back and forth, and after a decade of progressive ideas, it is inevitably swinging away from us.
Don’t succumb to fatalism.

Look around us: people don’t live in the politics of the pendulum, they live in a world where people are losing their jobs as a result of financial instability, where people are struggling to make public services listen to their needs and where the planet is at risk.

And we are the right people to fight for these causes.

We are the right people, because all of these causes we champion require our insight that the power of the individual can be allied with the power of the right kind of government not to stifle but liberate people and build a fairer society.

And we have the right leader as well. In these tough times, we need someone with resolve, toughness, and a deep commitment to fairness to take the right decisions on behalf of ordinary people.

We have that man in Gordon Brown, and he is the same man today as the man who spent ten years fighting for fairness in the Treasury and we all in this party have a duty to support his leadership.

And what about what the other parties have to offer?

Did you see the Lib Dems last week?

For years, the Lib Dems having been huffing and puffing about us not spending enough, and now they come along and say they want £20bn of cuts in public spending to fund tax cuts.

I say, after their Conference, let’s never let them get away with the Lib Dem deceit that somehow they care more about public services than Labour.

And let’s not fall for the Tory con either, the latest Tory con which says you can meet progressive goals with Conservative policies.

They aren’t proposing modern solutions to our problems; they’re proposing the failed old solutions of the past.

Take the financial problems. They still say we shouldn’t have taken Northern Rock into public ownership. And what did George Osborne say this week of all weeks?

“…The causes of the problem are not the financial markets”.

Conference, they still don’t get it.

And they don’t get it either when it comes to society. It’s not modern and it’s not credible to say that Britain’s social problems can be solved by charities on their own. I’m the Minister for Charities. I know how important they are now. But don’t tell me that 19th century approaches can solve 21st century problems. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.

And with globalisation widening the gap between rich and poor, it’s not credible to say, as David Cameron does, that he believes “we’re all in this together” and then say redistribution has “reached the end of the road”.

And they still say only a minority should go to University. That’s not going to help the teenager in my constituency.

They still say think the  best way to spend billions of pounds is on inheritance tax cuts for the few. Think what that could do for long term care system in this country.

So don’t let anyone tell you that there isn’t a choice of competing visions in this country: a Labour vision of a society more open, more fair, more equal; a Tory vision of a society closed, unfair and unequal.

It’s time to say there isn’t an option of Labour goals, Tory people.

It’s time to expose the Tories for who they really are. It’s time to take back our language.

And friends, it’s time to do something else as well. It’s time to rediscover our idealism.

I’ve gone round the country and I’ve talked to you about the manifestos the ones you most admire: 1945, 1964, 1997.

All of them captured our spirit of idealism, and I see that spirit shown by people across this party, young and old alike.

People like Olivia Bailey. She came to the National Policy Forum in July. She was putting forward a motion for votes at 16, and lots of people older than her – and they thought wiser than her – said she had done a great job but she was bound to lose and she should concede defeat.

She didn’t, she carried on, and she won the vote overwhelmingly.

I think we need to learn from the spirit of people like Olivia Bailey, not just on votes at 16 but on all the causes we face.

Because we are the idealists in politics today:

We are the people who believe every child can realise their hopes.

We are the people committed to every family having time for each other.

We are the people committed to everyone having dignity in old age.

We are the people committed to every generation preserving the planet for the next.

And so, Conference, let it be said of us at the end of this week:

This was the Conference where we set out the big causes we want to fight for.

This was the Conference where we showed the stomach for the fight.

This was the Conference where we fought for fairness.

This was the Conference where we resolved to stand up and win for the people of this country.