Act to help Labour in local government or risk lost generation

By Theo Blackwell

A rather patrician MP, I forget who (although I suspect Roy Jenkins), once counselled that the mark of a steadfast Prime Minister was to take a poor set of local elections on the chin. Perhaps this was true in the 1970s with a single set of poor local election results – it is not so in this decade with yet another hammering at the local polls and just a year to go before the election.

There is a rather obvious, but neglected, point to be made: Gordon Brown must not repeat the defeatist mistake of the Conservatives in the 1990s and hunker down in Whitehall, neglecting our existing (and former) local government base. It’s an obvious point worth making because I don’t really feel Labour’s local government voice has been heard for a while now, even though local activism is so key to our revival.

Before I make some suggestions on how we can move forward, let’s deal with just how dreadful the results were. While we never expected to prosper in the Conservative Shires this year, to lose key strongholds of Lancashire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire marks a worryingly low ebb for the Labour Party.

In the papers yesterday, much of this was attributed to the collapse of the Labour vote, rather than a major advance by the Conservatives. As John Curtis argues in the Independent: “the [Labour] party’s vote fell rather more heavily than the nationwide average in wards where it was previously relatively strong, including where it was trying to defend the local seat against a Conservative challenge.”

This has left Labour without a single county council in England. A handful of county councillors survive in areas of the east and south-east, even in areas where we have Labour MPs. But in areas where Labour was previously weak, the results are all the more shocking for party strategists when combined with the European Parliamentary results. Labour was routed in Scotland, and representation in the South-West slumped to sixth place. The BNP won two seats and the Conservatives are triumphant after coming an historic first in the popular vote in Wales, which had been dominated by Labour for almost a century. It won 145,193 votes to Labour’s 138,852.

Our 15.7% was the worst polling by a party in government by some margin.

The long-term prospects for Labour without a vibrant local government base should frighten tacticians. A key reason for the delayed revival of the Conservative Party during the 1990s can be attributed to the successive slaughter of its local government base, year on year from 1993-1996. Indeed, it dealt the Tories such a fundamental blow in the north of England that even now, well over a decade later, it is difficult to see signs of a truly meaningful recovery in these areas even now.

Labour has now slipped to the third party of local government, having lost successive major cities Sheffield, Liverpool, Newcastle and Birmingham. Doncaster now has an English Democrat Mayor. And the list goes on.

These build on previously poor results going back some years. The loss of London to Boris Johnson’s Conservatives further underlined Labour’s defeat in the capital in 2006. We now run a cluster of only 8 local authorities London – without ‘flagships’ like Camden and Hammersmith and Fulham. Nottingham and Manchester only remain as significant redoubts from Labour’s once dominant position in local government. Worryingly, Conservative control of large swathes of the country points to a new political dynamic between the central and local government, which we will no doubt see over the next year.

Someone once said that the difference between an MP and a Leader of a Council was that one had the powerless glamour of having the letters “MP” after your name and the slim chance to be a Minister; and the other the glamour-less power of running a council, with a budget of hundreds of millions of pounds. We would do well to remember the power of councils, today accountable for around one-quarter of all public spending – in excess of £144 billion.

Key government programmes are vital to Labour’s image as a party of action, rather than words. The delivery of Building Schools for the Future; Surestart; transport initiatives; local regeneration schemes as well as bread-and-butter issues are all tied up in this relationship.

But the pulse of Labour local government is more than its raw power to deliver policies. It is also the experience of its best people. Unless we act quickly Labour will lose people with real grassroots neighbourhood trust. Importantly for those in Westminster the local politicians often act as an informal cipher communicating and explaining government policy and announcements. Renewal surely cannot be achieved without a serious effort to re-engage this important part of the party.

So we need to start building again, recognising the impact of our losses so far and the people we have lost. Local activism comes from engaged local people, who know the area around them and its issues – proper local campaigns, not just Voter ID and leaflets. To win back councils up and down the country the leadership need to seek out those missing-in-action, and listen to them.

So here’s my starter for five to get the ball rolling:

1 – Party Summit to re-engage ‘lost generation’ of councillors/former councillors:

Lose power and you lose good people and too often councillors are left out in the cold after their defeat. Lose these comrades, their friends and neighbours and I wager you will lose previously Labour wards just like the Tories did in the 1990s. And it’s not just councillors, but school governors and people appointed from the community to outside bodies too. This makes a comeback after 2010 less likely. Many, despite years of service, are bound to feel let down: having lost elections due to national (or international) factors. The Party should reach out and call an immediate summit as part of its process of re-engaging this potentially lost generation of experienced members. This needs to be driven from the very top.

2 – Learning from Labour’s new ‘insurgents’:

We are already in opposition in local government. Labour has lost swathes of experienced and dedicated councillors over recent years – people who remain the eyes and ears for the party in the local community, ciphers for government policy at a local level. Many of these people still work hard for the party in opposition – they currently know what the Tories and Lib Dems are like in power. The party could take some lessons in ‘insurgency’ from the best of them, as they are seeing what the Tories are like right now. MPs in particular need to listen to their message if they aren’t already.

3 – Presenting local government achievers in a new light.

Whatever steps the party has taken in the past to develop a story of local Labour achievement hasn’t really worked, and has been too top-down. It’s time to think again. Labour should identify its top leaders and use their potential much more effectively and in public. In the US exciting new state senators or city governors are seen as the future, to be nurtured and showcased for their ideas. Look at how the Tories have always used Westminster, and now Hammersmith and Fulham, as exemplars for the future when in power but also when in opposition – they aren’t afraid of demonstrating success (as they see it).

4 – A place at the policy table as well as the party table.

Sure, there is some representation for local government in policy development and party rules but there remains an intellectual gulf. On the back of an envelope, I can only name a couple of MPs who have actually had practical experience of post-2000 reformed local councils, the new Executive/Cabinet structures and the new scrutiny process which local people encounter when they try to challenge the workings of their council at their neighbourhood level. This is even less so with special advisers and other policy ciphers in government. There needs to be an immediate culture shift within the commanding heights of the party towards local government and local activism, bringing in local government figures who have actually had experience of running local councils to advise on policy areas. And if we do that we don’t just need those of have served the longest, but those who have actually achieved the most – which is not necessarily the same thing.

5 – Local government settlement must be part of the constitutional reform debate:

The gap between what people think happens in local democracy and how it actually functions is wide. That means that the debate started about constitutional reform must address the fundamental weakness inherent in local government. Introducing fixed-term Parliaments, changing voting for Westminster or reforming the House of Lords won’t amount to a hill of beans unless Whitehall’s fundamentally odd relationship with local government changes: including having the courage to tackle council tax reform.

The problems and these solutions should be considered and addressed with urgency.

Cllr. Theo Blackwell is a Labour councillor in Camden.