TORY Britain, 2020. The great thing about our country is that everywhere you look there are folk organising to help each other. At work, in the community, in churches, neighbourhood groups, trade unions, schools, food banks and clothes banks and universities.

The question is how to tie all this spontaneous activity together into a movement for real change. It is no longer time to play the usual rules of politics. And it’s certainly not the time to abstain on one Tory proposal after another. It’s time to resist.

The statistics are stark: 1.9 million emergency food parcels; 4.3 million children and 1.9 million pensioners living in poverty; 17,000 deaths a year caused by cold housing; over a million households in desperate need of social housing, with 100,000 waiting for more than ten years; 4 million people living below the breadline, despite working, and a 141 per cent increase in people living on the streets since 2010.

But statistics don’t tell of human misery. Every one of these numbers reflects a story of human hardship and struggle.

Overcrowded and unsafe living conditions, mental and physical ill-health, families dependant on foodbanks. Parents are skipping meals to ensure their children have food on their plates and people are working all the hours they can, yet having to borrow just to get by. Older people having to choose between food or fuel.

Poverty benefits no one. A recent Rowntree Foundation study estimated the cost of poverty in Britain to be £78 billion. People who are properly reimbursed work better, suffer less from ill health, spend more in the community and improve the quality of life for all of us.

However, the hard-earned progress in tackling poverty and creating opportunity for all by the last Labour government (of course there was always more we could have done) has been all but dismantled by the Tories and their policies over the last decade.

Tory austerity has hit the poorest the hardest. Millions of people who once were able to envisage a better future are now saddled with worry and insecurity.

The facts speak for themselves: Tory failure to reform and properly regulate a failing market economy has seen the richest 1,000 people increase their wealth by £538 billion since the 2008 crash.

Over the same period, hard-working, dedicated public-sector workers — nurses, doctors, teachers have faced pay freezes and real terms cuts. The TUC estimates that the average worker has lost more than £11,800 in real earnings over the same period.

The reality is that it’s getting worse. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated and further exposed the deep and entrenched levels of poverty that exist in our country.

The fact that the poorest areas of England are four times more likely to face lockdown than the richest areas is evidence that our economy is failing working people. The ideologically driven, inequitable distribution of resources and funding by the Tory government has failed to protect these communities at times of crisis.

And no-one should be hoodwinked by the warm words in the Tory response to the pandemic.

Their approach has been blunder after blunder. Support has been too little, too late, resulting in unemployment and poverty by forcing local businesses and services to go to the wall. Sectors such as aviation, hospitality and retail are all on the brink. You only have to walk down the high street to see the impact of government failure.

Dole queues are set to rise even faster. More than 673,000 people have lost their job since the beginning of the pandemic, despite the furlough scheme being in place and many of those in work earning less.

The division and poverty that plagued our communities in the 1980s is set to return — with brass knobs on. Not through necessity, but through political choice — the choice of the Tory Party.

Tackling poverty in Britain has now become a national emergency and the whole country — above all the labour movement — must be mobilised in the fight to eradicate it. If the Labour Party is not there to fight the cause of those in hardship, then who is?

But to do so, we need to be bold.

We must once and for all reject the failures of neoliberalism. Hollow words like “re-balancing the economy” must not become a repeat of past mistakes. In the same vein, “levelling up” the regions needs to mean something, rather than political spin.

The Tories always tip the scales to their wealthy friends. This must change. To break with the failures of the past we need a new economic and social framework that realigns the balance of maintaining economic efficiency along with social justice.

In doing so, no one can now argue against the principle of government intervention — the question is how. Tackling poverty requires a cross-government approach.

We need urgent action on a number of fronts. A variety of immediate ameliorative policy options to a government that has the right values. It should not stop here. What is necessary is a massive programme of transformative change. We must also bring to an end the disgraceful practices of big corporations tha purposely prey on the most vulnerable in society.

This year would have marked the realisation of the commitment to end child poverty made by the last Labour government — a target that the Tories abolished. Achieving this would have been a momentous step towards creating a fairer, more equal and prosperous country for all.

It is now time for Labour to renew its commitment to end child and pensioner poverty in Britain — creating a bold new, radical alternative to the millions struggling whose voices are seldom heard.

But let’s go even further. It is time to put full employment as the central objective of all economic policy. Full employment is not only morally the right thing to do, but it also rebuilds the confidence of the labour movement and the working class itself.

Let’s be honest, the Tories always act, often ruthlessly, in the interest of their class — the ruling class. It’s time that Labour re-committed to doing the same for our class.

Jon Trickett is MP for Hemsworth in West Yorkshire.