Dan Jarvis: The mission of Miliband’s Labour is to make state a servant to the people

They are, of course, two very different bodies. But they have one great thing in common. Both, at heart, are based on the idea of service. When I took my first steps in politics it seemed natural that I should seek to serve the Labour Party. We were founded on the idea that government should be the servant of the common good, that power and opportunity should not be restricted to the few, that democracy meant something more than the dominance of a small elite. Our basic impulse was, and is, that the state should be the servant of the people, not the other way round.

But each political generation needs to work out in its own way how to give practical expression to that idea of service.

Without losing an ounce of our desire to bring progress to the country, we have to keep on refining and perfecting what it means and how to achieve it – because the problems that our country faces change with each year, and the weapons we can use to tackle them also change.

Ed Miliband’s leadership has given us a renewed mission: to rebuild Britain as One Nation. One Nation politics requires government, the private sector and civic society to work together to build a Britain in which everyone can and does play their part. One Nation politics means both protecting – cherishing – places and institutions such as the NHS which bind us together, and recognising what needs to change.

In the past we concentrated on using the state, both to deliver services and to manage the economy. It was a powerful and in many ways effective tool, but it was also a blunt one. It helped people, but too often it also treated them like the subjects – it was something that did things to and for people, but not with them. And it focused very strongly on the material conditions of life. One Nation Labour is based on a broader idea of service. It recognises that those materialist concerns still matter, especially as living standards are being squeezed as never before. But it also incorporates an understanding that the well-being of society involves more than material considerations.

In practical terms that means a transition in our thinking about the state and its relationship with citizens and communities, finding ways in which it can more closely reflect what people want and need. This would involve, for example, co-production – the development of services in collaboration with the people who use them – becoming the norm rather than a think-tank talking point.

It would also mean adopting a more tailored approach to getting people back into work – as seen in the emphasis on effective training and jobsearch support in the compulsory jobs guarantee programme proposed by Ed Balls and Liam Byrne. And it means “whole person” care based on what people want and need, not what is convenient for the state.

Such an approach also means a “whole child” education, based on much more than test results, and encompassing key aspects of character development, such as leadership, resilience, self-management and the ability to work in a team. It means a greater emphasis on localism. It means a greater concern for some of the more intangible sinews of community – including preserving and improving our public spaces – parks, leisure centres and libraries.

It means, in short, working with a richer, more nuanced, vision of progress, built on a more human scale. Community innovation and engagement – a politics of the common good in which everyone takes part – will be central to the way we will seek to govern.

One Nation Labour is moving on from the straitjacket of seeing the market as the only innovative alternative to the state. Too often the cost of the supposedly efficient private option has been more than the alternative it replaces. A decision to privatise should be made with the right attitude: rather than being a negative decision – using the market to reduce the role of the state – any move to introduce the market should be made on the positive grounds that we know it will do better.

We will subject the public sector to the same rigour, but feel relaxed about using it where it works better. We will try to make state services more responsive to communities, more innovative and more efficient, by involving users – looking for inspiration and alternatives to civil society and the co-operative movement. At a fundamental level, this agenda is about challenging who has power in our country. There were many achievements of the last Labour government of which we should be enormously proud. But we now have a leader who also recognises that we did not do enough to change the balance of power in Britain.

In Ed Miliband we have a leader who knows that giving people control and autonomy is both an objective in itself – an important element of the society we are working for – and a means to that end: it can be a powerful tool for ensuring that public services deliver what is needed as efficiently and effectively as possible.

We should delight in the opportunities this offers us. With our roots in co-operatives, in trade unions, in the movement for worker dignity, this agenda belongs at the core of Labour’s identity.

In Tory rhetoric, freedom and the market are often little more than useful camouflage to justify greed and the rule of the strong.

By understanding the nature of service, embracing the change we need, and delivering a better politics that ensures everyone can play their part, One Nation Labour is making our vision stronger and more democratic. It is why our party exists. It is about a more perfect form of service.

• Dan Jarvis is the Labour MP for Barnsley Central.