Why I’m backing a Co-operative future for London

In just a few months’ time, Londoners will be going to the polls to elect a new Mayor and Assembly for London. This will be the fourth time that Londoners have had the opportunity to set the agenda for London since the creation of the GLA. However, this election is perhaps the most important since city government was restored in 1999. The outcome will determine the fate of a whole generation of Londoners, who will have grown up under a conservative administration at City Hall.

The poll will determine whether the gap between rich and poor in London will continue to widen, it will determine whether Londoners will continue to be penalised through endless fare hikes, but most of all, it will determine our city’s ethos for this new decade. The choice is between a co-operative London based on fairness, responsibility and accountability, or a conservative London, rooted in unfairness, a lack of opportunity and a culture of irresponsibility.

That is why I am proud, as the Labour and Co-operative Assembly member for North-East London, to be backing the London Co-op Party’s manifesto for the May elections. A win for Ken and greater Labour party representation on the Assembly would be a victory for co-operative solutions against the Conservatives’ ethos of protecting irresponsible finance and entrenching inequality.

I know through working with the co-operative movement in my own constituency just what a difference they can make to communities. In my constituency of North East London, vulnerable individuals are targeted by legal loan sharks who trap my constituents into ever widening circles of debt. That’s why we need to do more to give Londoners access to credit unions and end this Dickensian practice of legal loan sharks making capital out of the misery of others.

However, there are many other areas where a Labour and Co-operative Assembly and Mayor can make a difference. Londoners struggling to find affordable housing could be helped on to the housing ladder through the roll-out of the pioneering Co-op party “New Foundations” mutual housing model. This could deliver affordable, decent quality housing in which tenants are empowered and have democratic control over their homes.

One of the greatest responsibilities of the Mayor and Assembly is to support and train the next generation of Londoners to be engaged and active citizens who can lead London into the future. We must deal with the disconnect between City Hall and young people by seeking to establish a youth assembly who can bring young Londoners’ concerns to the decision makers at the top of London government. To this end, in the next few months I will be liaising with schools and colleges in my constituency to bring young people into the GLA and discuss how we can get the voice of young Londoners heard by decision makers at City Hall.

These three examples illustrate the fresh and exciting vision that Labour’s Mayoral and Assembly candidates offer voters in the May elections. A more co-operative London will be one more confident in its future, one that demands responsibility for all, one that seeks to bring communities together to solve problems and one that listens to its young people. We should be in no doubt about the scale of the challenge ahead. Undoing the damage done by Boris’s administration and sowing the seeds of a new co-operative London will not be a one-term project. But it’s a goal worth fighting for.

In the coming months, my colleagues and I will be out on doorsteps across the capital with a positive vision to offer for London’s future. I know that by working together we can turn that vision into a reality and put co-operative policies at the heart of running our capital.

Jennette Arnold OBE AM is the Labour and Co-operative Assembly Member for North-East London