Local Labour must lead the way, says Alison McGovern
When the next Labour prime minister chairs their first cabinet meeting in Downing Street, the real experts in government will not be around the table. There will be precious few on Labour’s frontbench who have served as ministers, handled budgets or run departments. For first-hand experience, the party will have to look to its local government leaders and the government in Wales.
It is partly for this reason that I have been touring the country interviewing local leaders about their plans, the challenges they face and the connection they have with the towns and cities that they run. But how to use power is not the only thing Labour can learn from its local government base – we can also learn how to gain power. Many of the leaders I spoke to were in places that have Labour councils but send Tory members of parliament to Westminster. Listening to local leaders is vital to our prospects at the next election, and is one more reason why Progress is launching the Governing for Britain Network.
Looking back on the interviews as a whole, there are three common threads that run through all of them. The first is the importance of having a positive vision for the place you aspire to lead. Whether it was Tom Beattie picking Corby up after the end of the steel industry, or Peter Marland leading Milton Keynes’ rapid expansion into a key city, the clear message was that an inclusive plan for progress and development can command wide support. These leaders did not believe elections are about ‘taking sides’, they believed everyone in their community was on the same side and could unite behind a common vision.
Second, credibility and trust come from the decisions you make, not nice lines in a speech. If Labour is aiming for the sunlit uplands of economic credibility, the journey must start in the unfashionable foothills of local government. It is our city leaders who are working out how to deliver quality results with diminishing resources, reforming services and rethinking the role of the state and its interaction with citizens. It is also Labour in local government that is building bridges with business in cities like Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds. We run all the major cities in Britain; this experience must be the route back to economic credibility.
If local government is key to restoring trust in the Labour party, it is equally true that Labour must show more trust in local government. This s my final lesson from my tour. A radical devolution plan, developed in partnership with local leaders, ignoring obsessions with symmetry and focusing on pushing power down to the local level, is essential. But so too is involving local leaders much more in the work of the national party. Whether it is going on Question Time, or even sitting around the shadow cabinet table as Liz Kendall has suggested, we cannot continue to leave some of our best politicians out in the cold.
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Alison McGovern MP is chair of Progress
To read all her interviews with Labour local government leaders, visit: prog.rs/govbrit
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