Leader of Ed Miliband's policy review says Labour best placed party to bring nation together after learning 'hard lessons'

Labour failed to realise the impact of immigration, didn't pay enough attention to the kind of low paid work people are doing and treating problems rather than preventing them, according to the man leading Ed Miliband's policy review.

Jon Cruddas, speaking at an event held by the Civitas thinktank, said that Labour "got things wrong" under the last government, and that the changes going on within the party are deep and difficult but that it will emerge in a better state.

He said there is a "powerful sense of grievance and dispossession" across much of Britain because of changes in society.

However, he said Labour would be the best placed party to bring the nation together after learning "hard lessons" about what went wrong in 2010.

"This is not about sticking a few policies onto the old party machine and then jolting it back into life," he said. "We are transforming a declining 20th century mass party, into a dynamic 21st century political movement.

"We are literally changing Labour so that we can change the country. There are no comfort zones. No pretence about the fiscal realities nor the hard choices we will face."

Cruddas characterised the voters Labour needs to win round as the people who "tend to think of themselves as both English and British" and "care about their families and work hard for a better life".

Those people "don't feel they get back what they deserve", he added.

"Labour should be their natural home. But in May 2010 they didn't think that we understood their lives. They turned their backs on us and we suffered one of our worst ever defeats," he added.

Cruddas said the old model where "the state does things to or for people won't work", so Labour must devolve power to people.

"That is why Labour's One Nation is explicitly a story of national renewal," he said.

As Labour focuses on the role of the family in society, he said there would be a major focus on boosting the domestic roles of fathers and the working roles of mothers.

"There is a deep feeling of unfairness amongst women at the burden they have to shoulder," he said. Too many have a triple shift of paid work, looking after the children and caring for an older relative.

"Amongst men there is the sense of being excluded from domestic life. We need a new conversation about families and their relationships that is jointly owned by women and men.

"We need to value father's family role as highly as his working role, and women's working role as highly as her domestic one."

He said Labour would have high expectations of fathers to make sure they "step up to the mark" but equally protect them from the idea that the "sexual violence of a few men means that all fathers have to be treated as a potential threat".

The party will explore changes to maternity services to help include fathers and look at paid leave for prospective fathers to attend antenatal sessions and hospital appointments during pregnancy of their partners.