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This final essay asks the deepest question. Not what the state should do, or what the economy should look like, or even what kind of nation we should be. But what kind of people – what kind of citizen – does a covenantal nation require?

Political and economic systems are shaped by citizens and their expectations – and that they then in turn shape citizens. Political argument (including these essays) is usually about getting the state to perform better. That is necessary, but not sufficient for a politics of covenant. We should ask more of the state, and we can also ask more of the citizen.

A politics of covenant must begin where covenantal life is first learned – in the family. It is in the family that people first experience reciprocity, obligation, and care, and it is through this experience that they become capable of citizenship. The family is the smallest society in which freedom and duty co-exist.

Families can cultivate and sustain the virtues that political and economic systems alone cannot create – love, trust, patience, forbearance, generosity, perseverance. They are the local workshops of the common good, producing citizens who understand both rights and responsibilities.

Public institutions should therefore act not as substitutes for family life but as allies of it, removing the barriers that make commitment difficult and time scarce. Housing policy, employment law, education, and welfare must all be judged by a single test: do they make it easier for people to form and sustain families, and to care across generations? If the answer is no, the policy is failing the nation.

Citizenship must also be practiced in adult life. In a screen-based world, opportunities to gather with and work alongside others are ever rarer and more precious.

This is where the British tradition of voluntary association, which is so important to Labour, has historically done its work: co-operatives, working men’s clubs, trade unions, mutual aid societies, churches. The era of liberalism has not treated these institutions well.

There is a serious decline in formal volunteering, but that is surely the tip of an iceberg in terms of the decline of our associational life. Trade union membership has fallen from its peak of 13.2 million in 1979 to around 6.4 million today. Membership of the Women’s Institute has declined by more than half since the 1970s.

It may be that, as the state struggles to deliver, organise, and provide, that civil society will expand into some of the space that the state cannot occupy. I know from my own background that the so-called ‘third sector’ (I say so-called, because arguably it was the first sector) solves problems with flexibility and creativity that state organisations struggle to match.

None of this – family, voluntary association, national service – is primarily a matter for legislation. You cannot pass a bill that makes people love their neighbours, join a union, or volunteer a year of their life.

But government can make family life easier or harder, civic association possible or impossible, and take bold new steps to create a sense of mutual belonging. The choices we make about housing, welfare, education, and the funding of local institutions either build the capacity for covenant or quietly erode it. There is no neutral option.

We want and need citizens who know that they belong to one another. A politics of covenant asks government to clear the ground for that kind of citizen to grow. The rest is up to us.