The Greater London Authority was supposed to be the jewel in the crown of New Labour’s programme to revitalise local government. The election in May 2000 of the country’s first ever directly elected mayor, and the assembly to scrutinise his work, would dramatise and popularise the party’s push to re-engage the voters with Britain’s most moribund layer of government.
But two years on, assembly chair Trevor Phillips seems restless, frustrated and impatient. It’s not that Phillips, who chaired the campaign to persuade Londoners to vote yes to the creation of the GLA and, briefly, ran for the mayoral nomination himself, believes that London’s new regional government isn’t working. It’s more a sense that he feels that the GLA has not blazed a path which others have been enthusiastic to follow.
It’s true that this year saw the election – in six authorities – of the first directly elected mayors since Ken Livingstone’s virtual coronation in May 2000. But it’s equally the case that the push to create more directly elected mayors has stalled. And even where it hasn’t, some of those elected – like ‘Robocop’ Ray Mallon in Middlesbrough and the infamous ‘Monkey’ in Hartlepool – are hardly the kind of figures that the proponents of elected mayors had in mind. More worryingly, too, last year’s general election indicated that the disengagement which Labour wanted to tackle at the local level seems to have spread to other levels of government.
Phillips, a patron of Progress and the most senior Labour figure on the GLA, is characteristically blunt about the new London authority. ‘I am sure,’ he admits,
‘I have developed a reputation amongst my colleagues of being slightly impatient, rash and ‘ – he pauses – ‘“brutal” was the word
I think I heard somewhere.’ Of the transition from journalist and television presenter to public servant, Phillips says: ‘The difference
I found in public service is that I am not sure that the culture really likes results. It loves process, it loves review, it loves sharing.’
Phillips argues that the GLA has achievements to its name. The mayor, for instance, believes his policy of holding down fares has led to the six to eight percent increase in bus journeys. Phillips is personally proud of the code which, for the first time, assigns responsibility for safety on London’s inner waterways – he had discovered that three children had drowned in them the year he became assembly chair.
He’s also aware that the GLA fills
a critical gap in tackling issues which are too small for Whitehall but too large for the London boroughs to deal with. Equally, groups such as ethnic minorities, who may numerically not be large in some London boroughs but who, collectively, constitute
a significant proportion of the capital’s population, are given a greater voice through the GLA. Having campaigned for years for the need for a national screening programme for the victims of sickle-cell anaemia, a condition affecting Afro-Caribbean and Asian people, Phillips used his position on the GLA to persuade health secretary Alan Milburn to include
a multi-million pound pilot for such a programme in the NHS Plan. He is convinced that it would not have happened had the GLA not been in existence.
And what of the mayor himself? The pair jockeyed for Labour’s mayoral nomination, fought each other when Phillips accepted party candidate Frank Dobson’s offer to be his running mate, and have since had to work together in the new authority. Phillips praises Livingstone as hardworking: ‘I say we work together perfectly amicably. I find him a very practical guy. He’s very bright, very quick.’ Nonetheless, Phillips is concerned that the people around the mayor are ‘incredibly defensive and anxious about working with other people,’ including assembly members. More damningly, however, Phillips doesn’t sense that there is ‘a big idea, a big vision for London coming from Ken Livingstone …
If the biggest arguments we are having are about where to put the tall buildings and about pigeons, then I think we are slightly underplaying the importance of the job.’
Unlike some in the party, Phillips is not downbeat about Labour’s chances if the mayor doesn’t come back into the fold:
‘The mayor will have all the advantages of incumbency. However, that does not mean that Labour cannot run a convincing campaign.’ He urges the party not to get bogged down, as it did in 2000, in ‘internal party matters’, but instead recognise that Londoners want ‘the next election to be about the future of the city: how we keep the city prosperous, but at the same time decent; how we manage to sustain wealth, but at the same time make sure that we don’t have the vast wave of poverty that we do in the city; how we keep the number of jobs climbing, but make sure that London kids get those jobs.’
Demand for a star
If this sounds like Phillips’ opening shot for the nomination, the man himself is not saying. ‘My view – and this is a New Labour mistake – is that we often respond to the newspapers’ demand for a star before we decide what the star is going to stand for.
I would like us to decide what we stand for and then choose a candidate who could carry that message. It might be me, it might be somebody else.’
Of more immediate concern to Phillips, though, is his sense that the gap between the voters (or, more critically, the non-voters) and Britain’s political class – from its parties to its institutions – is growing alarmingly wide. He is keen to avoid the notion that Britons are disengaged. Something like 23 million people, he says, take part in work for the voluntary sector: ‘These are active citizens.’ He doesn’t, however, find it particularly mysterious that these people are not involved in political parties. Most, he argues, are keen to make sure that the effort they put in has significance or gets a result. Coupled with this, good voluntary organisations ensure ‘they will always find something for you to do, whatever you are good at’. Political parties, including the Labour Party, appear to defy this approach: ‘We make the hurdles to involvement very high. And some of these hurdles are cultural.’
The party must open up its discussions to people who are ‘near the party, not just people who are in the party’. While the decision-making on policy must continue to rest with the party’s members, Phillips feels that Labour’s policy-making process should seek to ‘bring people in; we need to give people a chance to feel that they influence what we think and what we say subsequently.’
Bring down barriers
Similarly, he is keen to open up paths to involvement in the party at a local level for those who choose not to become members. ‘I want the local pastor to feel that he can talk to the party, and be regarded seriously by it, even though he doesn’t carry a card … You need to bring down the barriers around the party. I think the way we organise it at the moment is not sympathetic to bringing in groups of people who are our natural supporters.’
Phillips also believes that ‘the separation of humanity into two species – those who hold public office and the rest – is terribly damaging.’ Not only does he think that more offices should be opened up to election – he cites the thousands of appointments made to NHS governing bodies – but suggests that ‘the average ordinary citizen should be able to make
the choice of spending some of their life
in public service without having to give up their career as an accountant or sportsman
or teacher.’
For many, the most worrying sign of the disconnection between politicians and the public is the rise of the far right across Europe and the minor gains made by the BNP here. Phillips thinks support for the party is not primarily the result of ‘outright, overt, nasty racism. It is far more about people who feel they are not being heard.’ The BNP, he argues, ‘represents a haven for people who feel there is nothing for them in the political system’. To a degree, Phillips blames the Tories for this. The Conservatives’ ‘poverty of ideas’, he says, means that people who will never vote Labour are being denied representation.
But Labour cannot escape the blame, either. Phillips thinks that in the East End of London and in some northern towns, ‘some traditional Labour supporters are looking at the BNP as alternative because they think these are the only people who speak up for the working class.’ This partly stems from Labour’s need to establish a reputation for competence which means that ‘we have begun to look like a bunch of suits, a load of blokes who are good managers and have learned to speak well on TV and know how to handle difficult questions by shutting them down.’
Shuffle to right
Phillips warns the party against ‘shuffling to the right’ on issues like immigration, urging it instead to rediscover ‘the tones of leadership’. He refers to ‘the poetry of Labour – its great traditions, what we are really about – the issue of equality, lifting up the poor, thinking of new ways in which people can live together’ and says: ‘All these issues are somehow being lost underneath our messages of competence.’ He is, however, buoyed by the fact that the Budget represents a step towards re-establishing what Labour is about and proving that ‘we are not just here to manage things. We are different from the other guys. We are here to defend something, the NHS, which basically they have no interest in.’
He also thinks that the popularity of the Budget, with its explicit link between an individual tax rise and improvements in the NHS, may offer wider lessons. There is, Phillips suggests, ‘a strong case’ for linking certain kinds of big projects – in London’s case, tube modernisation or an orbital rail link – with a regional tax, which would be approved by voters when they elect their regional assemblies. He argues: ‘That will create a real connection between us, the politicians, and the voters and between the act of voting and the delivery of services.’ It’s a connection that, as Phillips is painfully aware, is badly in need of repair.