Labour needs to build on the best of the last 13 years – and politely park the worst

The Labour party has a real opportunity. We can't shirk the fact that we lost but, for all the slick Clegg/Cameron rhetoric, this will be a socially conservative government, made up of people who won't use the public services they are cutting and are not really concerned with fairness and equality. Many Liberal Democrat voters feel betrayed. We should encourage them to join us and build a much broader coalition. We must do better at defending our record in government and explaining it in language people understand. We all have policies that we didn't agree with, but overall the Blair/Brown governments did much good. Where were the big arguments about childcare and family-friendly working in the election campaign? We need to build on the best of the last 13 years and politely park the worst. I fear the leadership election will be quickly styled as yet another battle between the "modernisers" and the "dinosaurs", with pressure for us to start second-guessing where the Tory/Libs will go and become a "Cameron-lite" party. That would be a disaster. I'd like to see an end to the idea that we can run everything like a private market. People want high-quality, flexible, local, accountable public services, good enough to be used by all. Personally I want policies that genuinely help the poorest children. I am sceptical about the pupil premium, which doesn't address the fact that about 80% of a child's life chances are determined by their circumstances outside school. Labour began as a party of aspiration. That is still so but it needs to be explicitly married to progressive values. Fiona Millar is a journalist specialising in education and parenting issues and a former adviser to Cherie Blair