And unless Labour is able to embrace a politics of aspiration and inclusion, a politics that defies some of the traditional labels that have dogged politics for so long, then it's not going to win".
Too many in Labour are looking back on Tony Blair's time in office with "rose-tinted glasses" and claiming pejoratively that the party no longer understands aspiration, Sadiq Khan, one of the party's London mayoral hopefuls, has said.
"It means your dad working all the overtime hours that London Transport will give you, aspiration means your mum, notwithstanding having eight children, works as a seamstress at home as well to make ends meet.
David Miliband has delivered a harsh critique of his brother's election campaign, saying it appeared to push the Labour party backwards from the principles of aspiration and inclusion.
The comments, and the backlash against them, illustrate how a tormented racial history dating back centuries is in constant tension with the aspiration of a "rainbow nation".
That document would draw heavily on his report, commissioned by Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie, on greater "home rule" for Scotland, a broad aspiration that often attracts the most support from Scottish voters in opinion polls on constitutional reform, and some pro-reform thinktanks.
"The aspiration for the founders is that Xiaomi will become a global company that happens to be in China," said Barra - Xiaomi's first non-Chinese hire.
The remaining UK is not bound by that aspiration.
In adolescence, this national love affair with Italy conflicted rather eccentrically with a secret aspiration to temper and anglicise my innately Latin character.
This suggests Cameron is planning to follow the example of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, who inflicted four successive general election defeats on Labour by portraying the Tories as the guardians of aspiration and by depicting Michael Foot and Neil Kinnock as leftwing threats to economic stability.
Nothing should stop you going to university if you have the ability and the aspiration.
