Three cheers for Lord Reith. Not simply for the BBC, though a smile might have passed his lips when he saw the Scottish National party lose it and try to storm Pacific Quay. He would have relished his great British institution outraging the Yessers with its sheer reasonability. No, I mean for his role chairing the New Town Committee in 1945. It came up with the greatest institutional invention of the Attlee government – the New Town Development Corporation.
This is the government vehicle that has does more than any to change the face of Britain. The New Town Development Corporations pulled off the greatest trick in social housing; they were the landlords tenants loved. They built to last, and from Crawley to Cumbernauld their legacy is magnificent. Places that work and produce routinely great educational, health and employment outcomes.
Now, development corporations fall in and out of fashion but when a government really has a problem, ‘Who ya gonna call?’ Development corporations. Margaret Thatcher turned to them and the London Dockland Development Corporation – of which I was a director – left a huge public legacy. Not just a new financial centre but all the necessary elements for fundamental regeneration. Transport – the Jubilee line extension. Education – the University of East London. High-quality public space, including a new, modernist park. And it repositioned east London. Yep, the hipsters are ours too.
Cometh the need, cometh the corporation. And sure enough, what is Michael Lyons’ answer for the housebuilding crisis? Housing corporations. Bodies which will use development corporation powers. And this is the secret. Development corporations are the landowner, the planning authority and the developer for their patch. This is the bit that Labour normally baulks at, at least in opposition. ‘Anti-democratic’, many cry. ‘Effective’, I say. If you want change you have to will the means and not just the ends.
We have a housing crisis and it needs solutions and that means action. Forget the fluffy bunny concept of ‘garden cities’. There’s a good reason why Britain only has a two garden cities (both New Towns) and 26 New Towns. Just adding the word ‘garden’ to a proposal doesn’t make NIMBYs like it any more than before. What you do with NIMBYs is build them out. Concrete you can’t oppose is the antidote to NIMBYism.
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Some of you may have stopped reading about Scotland after the decisive referendum result. Well, you should still keep half an eye on it.
You probably thought the SNP would go through the five stages of loss and grief: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance. Those of us who knew them well realised that would lose no time in redefining the referendum as a historic victory on the scale of Flodden. So we knew they would – at the very least – get stuck in denial. But I did not predict that they would substitute Betrayal for Bargaining.
Here’s what’s going on.
First, they claim it wasn’t a defeat.
Second, they say ‘No’ only won a slim majority – it was, in fact, a clear 10 points.
Third, they claim that voters only opposed independence because of a promise of more powers. (They split here and some say it was a trick, others a promise.)
Fourth, they fabricate the pledges made, saying that Scotland was promised full devolution of taxes and powers over service except defence and foreign affairs. Independence without your own currency – which is, oddly, what they wanted.
Fifth, the say that if these never promised powers aren’t devolved than that will be a betrayal.
Sixth, they claim that invented ‘betrayal’ justifies another referendum. Some even say a plurality of members of the Scottish parliament will justify a unilateral declaration of independence.
It’s madness, of course. But we saw how far madness took them in the referendum campaign. It’s whack-a-mole, again, in Scottish politics.
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Once upon a time the United Kingdom had the 30-year rule – it was 30 years before you could see official papers and understand the background to decisions. With the habit of diaries and memoirs being published by the key players we have something more like the five-year rule; sometimes it feels like the five-month rule. One of the benefits is that we can read and understand political struggles while they are fresh and relevant rather than history.
This is the joy if Leighton Andrews’ new book – ‘Ministering to Education: a reformer reports’ (Parthian Press, £10.99). This is an account by a man who was described by Alastair Campbell as ‘the best education minister in the UK’ and by Michael Gove as ‘irresponsible and mistaken’. You probably already know which side you’re on, but what you don’t know is how good this book is. It is the best single account I have come across in the UK of a politician honestly recounting – and reflecting – on their experience of reform and change. It should be required reading for every single incoming Labour minister in the Miliband government – it’s worth a ton of training courses.
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John McTernan is former political secretary at 10 Downing Street and was director of communications for former prime minister of Australia Julia Gillard. He writes The Last Word column on Progress and tweets @johnmcternan
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