A vision of Europe fit for the 21st century and a practical plan to deliver strong rights, decent jobs and livelihoods, with strong unions at its heart, is one worth fighting for.

We too often hear about red tape but what they mean is the vital rights of workers.

The backwoodsmen are muttering about making Britain's draconian union laws - already among the toughest in Europe - harsher still. And parts of the media will continue to attack public service pensions, as if school meals staff, refuse collectors and healthcare workers have no right to a decent retirement.

Although there's a lot of focus on the Lib Dems, we need to keep our eyes on the far right of the Tories, who I suspect will become increasingly impatient in their appetite for tax cuts, deregulation and shrinking the state even further.

Each day more coalition MPs in seats outside the South East come out against George Osborne's regional pay cut plans, and Vince Cable now claims they are dead.

I do know what it's like to worry about bills, I do know what it's like to worry about even finding a child-minder, never mind paying them.

The TUC's new slogan 'a future that works' sets a profound challenge. Austerity and rapid deficit reduction is failing in its own terms, but even at its best it is short-sighted, muddle-through politics with no vision of a new economic model.