IN the months since our devastating election defeat, Labour has been consumed by a round of painful soul-searching. 

I spent the early stages of my leadership campaign focusing on the most difficult issues we heard on the doorstep — the deficit, immigration and benefits — because we won’t win until we regain the public’s trust on them. 

But this doesn’t mean copying the Tories. Far from it. Labour wins when we are better than them. The focus on our weaknesses gave Labour’s leadership campaign a negative feel. The time has come to lift people with a bigger vision. In the 21st century, what is Labour for? My answer is simple — to help everyone get on in life.

The hopes of people at all levels of society are pretty much the same: a secure job, a decent home, a good standard of living, prospects for their kids, and proper care for their parents. But, in our insecure, modern world, for far too many people, these dreams are dying. 

It will be the mission of the Labour Party I lead into government to revive them — and turn the light of hope back on. 

To do this, I will bring forward the most radical and far-reaching Labour vision for the country since the 1945 post-war Attlee government. That government civilised the last century. Mine will do the same for the 21st. 

In the manifesto I released last week, I pull together the ideas I have laid out throughout this leadership campaign — all bigger ideas than Labour has put forward in the recent past. They proudly put our traditional values in a modern setting. They show how life can be better tomorrow than it is today and provide something in very short supply in this country right now — hope. 

The first Budget from a majority Conservative government in 19 years took even more hope away from young people and made it harder for them to make their way in a challenging world. It raised the prospect of a two-tier workforce, dividing young and old, and disproportionately hit families in work. 

David Cameron continues to wage his campaign of demonisation against our trade union movement. I will oppose this unjustified attack on the legitimate role of trade unions to protect people in a fragmented and casualised workplace and if the new proposals get through Parliament I will repeal them. 

We must break the cycle of low pay and productivity by boosting pay at the lower end of the pay scales. We have seen the return to work undermined over recent decades, both due to the weakening of workers’ rights and wider economic trends, including globalisation and technological advances. 

Improving the economic position of British workers is not a simple challenge, but it will be at the heart of my mission as Labour leader. We need to invest in the skills and industries of the future, so that we have an economy of high-value, high-paid jobs.

The sad truth is that despite his attempt to commandeer the language of the living wage campaign, the Chancellor has delivered nothing of the sort, with a measure not based on cost of living, taking no account of the slashing of tax credits and ignoring the higher living wage rate needed in London.

I welcome plans to raise the minimum wage but, by applying the measure only to those aged 25 and over, the national minimum wage has now become a five-tier system, with your pay decided by the year you were born not the job you do. I want the raise to apply to every age group. 

One of the greatest failures of post-war public policy has been this country’s lack of focus on technical education. Our schools system is geared towards the academic, university route.

Young people who aspire to go on that route have clear goals to aim for and support to get there. But the same cannot be said for young people who aspire to a high-quality technical education. They have been neglected by successive parliaments full of people who went to university and have made that the focus of education policy.

I believe in comprehensive education. I will bring forward a new vision to reinvigorate it for the 21st century, based on true parity between academic and technical education. I will restore a local role in overseeing schools, rejecting the growing market of free schools and academies.

I will propose a national Ucas-style system for apprenticeships and extend access to student finance to help people to move to take up an apprenticeship. I will propose a reformed funding model for post-18 education, looking at a graduate tax to replace tuition fees for university and extend support for apprenticeships. 

No young person should have to start their career weighed down by a millstone of debt. My Labour Party will lift it off them. It’s no wonder so many people feel that politics doesn’t speak to them.

I will take Labour out of the “Westminster bubble” and make it the vehicle for the hopes and dreams of ordinary people once again. I will trust our councillors again and the time has come to trust local communities with more financial freedom too. We need the most ambitious house-building programme in half a century — the best way to bring down the housing benefit bill is to let councils build homes again. 

For too many people, the dream of having a place to call their own has faded away. My vision is of a society where everyone has an affordable home to rent or to own. But there’s still the danger of losing your home to the costs of social care. I am determined to make Labour the party that helps everyone protect what they’ve worked for. 

In recent years, I have written for the Morning Star about the failing system of care for older, disabled and vulnerable people. I have been on a mission to reform it ever since I saw my own grandmother go on a depressing journey through the care system 15 years ago. 

Labour created the NHS to free people from the fear of medical fees. We now need to do the same with care charges. So I am committed to extending the NHS principle to social care — where everybody contributes and everybody is covered. 

We need a new approach to our railways that puts passengers before profit too. Our railway system costs 40 per cent more to run than other systems across Europe — I will work to bring the railways back under public control and public ownership.

Under my leadership, Labour will ensure there is proper and accountable public control of the railways, with passengers’ interests put first. A new “National Rail” governing body should be created to end the fragmentation and privatisation. A progressive renationalisation of the railways will ensure that passengers again experience a truly unified rail and ticketing system across the country.

The next few years after a bad defeat will be defining for the labour movement. We will either rise to the challenge with bold solutions to big problems or we will be written off as timid, small and irrelevant. The change I offer is to take our party out of Westminster, put it back in touch with people across our country and I would like to ask for your support in doing that.

Neil Clark – Director, Campaign for Public Ownership

IT’S good news that Andy Burnham has pledged to bring the railways back under public ownership. However, his plan to do it progressively as franchises expire will take a long time as most franchises are due to expire before 2020.

Burnham’s commitment to build more council houses is welcome, as is his plan for a national Ucas system for apprenticeships.

He’s right too to focus on technical education. The problem overall with his programme is that it represents enough of a departure from New Labour positions to guarantee fierce Establishment attacks, but at the same time it’s not radical enough to attract back the four million or so voters who left Labour since 1997.

In short, if you’re going to antagonise Rupert Murdoch, go the whole hog and excite people with a genuinely populist, democratic socialist programme. This is what Jeremy Corbyn has done and it’s the reason why he’s leading the race. 

Kate Hudson – General secretary, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

I’M glad Andy Burnham talks of a bigger vision. But I don’t find one in what he says.

He is missing the big changes that could transform Britain’s role in the world — and we cannot separate what we do inside Britain from what we do outside. It’s fine to talk about helping everyone get on in life, but how does that relate to killing hundreds of thousands of people in illegal wars — creating a massive refugee problem in the process — and spending over £100 billion on weapons of mass destruction, instead of investing it in productive and sustainable industry to boost our economy?

As he doesn’t mention his stance on these crucial factors, you may like to know that Burnham voted for attacking Iraq in 2003 and 2014 and for replacing Trident in 2007 and 2015.

Liz Payne – Secretary, National Assembly of Women

IT’S a bit sad that Andy Burnham begins his piece with the bland statement that Labour will win when it’s better than the Tories. As an opener, this could have been better.

He also says that the hopes of people at all levels of society are the same. I don’t think most of us share the greedy hopes of the super-rich whose aspirations for privatisation and profit are crushing the futures of the majority of us.

The hopes and dreams that Burnham talks about are people’s rights — affordable homes, education, decent and secure jobs, care throughout their lives, etc.

The most pressing need is to lift people out of poverty and fear of poverty — the children and young people, the old, families and women.

Some 59 per cent of jobs paying below the minimum wage are held by women, many on zero-hours contracts. This is what the Labour Party in and out of Westminster must tackle if it is to have any credibility.

• This comment is in a personal capacity.

John Lister – Director, Health Emergency

WHAT’S remarkable in Andy Burnham’s statement is how little he, as a former health secretary and shadow health secretary, promises to change on the NHS.

In the election campaign Labour evaded the hard issues for the NHS — would it end the five-year freeze in real-terms spending since 2010 and prevent another five-year freeze — with extra cash to meet the rising pressures on the NHS?

Would Labour fulfil its promise to repeal the Health & Social Care Act that is creating chaos in many areas, bring privatised services back in house and legislate to reinstate the NHS — along the lines of Professor Allyson Pollock’s draft Bill?

Would Labour address the nightmare of the private finance initiative — £11 billion of new hospitals, which will cost £80bn to repay, and costing £2bn each year, saddling many trusts with unpayable bills?

Jeremy Corbyn raises all of these issues. Burnham says nothing. He launched his campaign in the offices of a tax-dodging company and followed that line through.

Ben Chacko – Editor, Morning Star

“WHAT is Labour for? To help everyone get on in life,” Andy Burnham tells us.

The shadow health secretary is right that for far too many people the dream of secure work, decent pay and a dignified retirement is dying.

But this is taking place against a backdrop of yawning inequality. Since the bankers’ crash, the wealth of the richest 1,000 families in the country has more than doubled — they now own around £550 billion in assets, equivalent to all the possessions of the bottom 40 per cent of the population — 10.7 million households.

Tough times for us are a direct consequence of a transfer of wealth and power away from working people to the elite, who have done very nicely out of the recession.

A credible Labour leader must challenge the notion that we can be pro-worker and pro-banker at the same time. Burnham still needs to tackle the question: “Which side are you on?”

Noises on the campaign trail about cutting benefits for migrants and renewing Trident suggest his answer to that is confused at best.

Rob Griffiths – General Secretary, Communist Party of Britain

ANDY BURNHAM’S proposals on social care, comprehensive education, training, the railways and any new anti-union laws are too little and too late to be thoroughly convincing.

He began his campaign by wooing the “centre ground,” which is actually the big business status quo imposed on public debate by the mass media.

As a result, his desperate scramble to win back left and progressive support from Jeremy Corbyn lacks credibility.

It’s not only the railways that should be taken back into public ownership but gas, electricity and water too — how else will we able to plan and finance sustainable energy and transport systems for the future?

Existing anti-union laws are far harsher than even the new ones proposed by the Tories — why has Burnham never called for their repeal?