A third Labour term would build on Britain's economic stability and ensure we are ready to face the challenges of the future, writes Tony Blair.

Our manifesto is more than a statement of policy. The policy was derived from a philosophy. This is that the future requires Britain to reach beyond some of the old divides of right and left and to fashion a new consensus for a different world. We, obviously, want that to be a progressive consensus.

The choice cannot be between a big state and a minimalist one; between a return to the high tax levels of the past and chronic underinvestment in the public realm; between an attempt to ward off globalisation through high regulation and a crude adherence to the survival of the fittest.

The whole genesis of New Labour was to break through these divides. The state we need is an enabling one. The tax and spending plans we need should correct the underinvestment but should not put at risk the competitive nature of the UK economy. Ill-conceived regulation today won't protect jobs: an active welfare state and investment in education and skills can.

That is why the opening up of our public services to diversity of supply, to consumer choice and to new ways of working is so essential and needs speeding up not slowing down. That is why we need to fight hard here and in Europe to stop unnecessary regulation and bureaucracy. That is why education is a vital sphere in which government must act – but why, as with university finance, it must be prepared to make hard decisions to get the best possible system.

It is why tax and spending decisions have to add up; a Conservative pledge to abolish tuition fees may be good opportunism but is bad policy. It is why a top tax rate of 50 per cent, proposed today by the Lib Dems, is economically wrong. It's not that the Lib Dems don't have the right aspirations. It's that they won't make the difficult decisions to achieve them. To pretend that in one parliament you can load £30bn of extra tax all on top rate taxpayers to fund your programmes, is wildly unrealistic; and if implemented, would damage the economy.

I believe that it is New Labour, rather than the Conservatives, which understands the profound challenges facing our economy and society, and has the right policies to foster enterprise and the knowledge economy upon which future wealth creation depends.

We have created the highest employment and the most most sustained growth since modern records began – now 50 consecutive quarters of growth; interest rates on average half the level we inherited; inflation low and stable; income per head higher now than in France, Germany and Japan, where in 1997 we were behind them all.

On the basis of this stability, enterprise and wealth creation has flourished: four million businesses in Britain today, 300,000 more than eight years ago, with a third of Europe's top 600 companies now British and whole sectors – such as financial services – forging ahead to a degree unmatched elsewhere in Europe.

So stability is the foundation. It was not easy to achieve. It was the product of tough decisions, fiscal discipline, and an understanding of how much hard-working families depend on such a discipline to get by.

It is striking that commentators now talk of a British model of enterprise and welfare. This is an extraordinary change from the past.

Now, we have reached the point where others in Europe look to us as a distinct model in our own right: not simply a hybrid of the best of the US and Europe, but a distinct British model of enterprise which is coherent in itself and increasingly successful.

We have the right ideas – economic stability, market dynamism, the knowledge economy, and human capital mutually reinforcing to meet the global competitive challenge. We understand the future challenge; we have the policies to meet it successfully; and that is our central claim to a third term in this election.

This article first appeared in The House Magazine.