We've got to get back to old-fashioned politics that's in touch with the people we seek to represent and to avoid self-inflicted wounds.
Politics is only worthwhile if you are doing what you believe, regardless of the slings and arrows.
By confirming the importance of politics and politicians in Britain, we can build from the bottom up and begin to reverse the worrying anti-politics trend, which will empower the elite technocrats and leave defenceless the man or woman in the street with a mere vote to cast.
What is it that unites, on the left of British politics, George Orwell, Billy Bragg, Gordon Brown and myself? An understanding that identity and a sense of belonging need to be linked to our commitment to nationhood and a modern form of patriotism.
Politics is about the participation and engagement of the wider citizenry - to miss that point would doom us to irrelevance.
If you don't create a sense of order and stability, if people do not feel secure, then progressive politics is dead. That is a fact of history. The right has always emerged supreme when destabilisation and insecurity prevail.
I didn't come into politics to have to deal with the issue of clandestine entry, illegal working, or an asylum system that allows a free run for right-wing bigots.
Without the political parties and the volunteering work of their members day in, day out, we would have a very different sort of politics and society.
We need to reaffirm that politics is not merely compatible with economic progress and development in the 21st century, but essential to it.
I am totally in favour of reform - but it must be reform that changes the nature of British politics, not simply the makeup or operation of parliament.