Reaching our beyond our metropolitan heartlands

Understanding middle England is a key challenge for Labour. Recognising the role of Labour in local government is a big part of the answer. Although he’s since withdrawn his bid, it was heartening to see Chuka Umunna travel to Swindon to launch his leadership his campaign. We need to be successful in places like Swindon if we want to win in 2020.

Milton Keynes is another one of those places. Milton Keynes is young, dynamic and growing. We have the fastest growing economy in the UK. We build more houses per year than any other area. We create jobs. We are ranked by Centre for Cities as the number 1 place to invest for a new or growing business and we have low unemployment.

And we do all of this with a Labour-led council.

Yet, despite the good news, our city has its fair share of challenges. The cost of housing both to buy and rent is soaring. We have significant areas of deprivation. The cost of building houses on our infrastructure such as schools, our hospital, GP practices and roads, is immense. We have a booming population of children, but also a boom in older people.. Life expectancy on some of our early new town estates is 14 years less than other parts of the city, sometimes just yards apart.

In many of our towns and cities, this was the backdrop we fought the election on. Places doing OK but could be better. People struggling and working hard for modest reward.

Often, it is said that Labour is too London-centric, but it goes wider than that. Too often our policy agenda is metro-centric. Our solutions are based not just on London, but revolve around our core cites and metropolitan heartlands.

As a Labour Leader of a council in the South East, I am part of a select group of people actually in a position of power for the Labour Party in the south of England. Look at the map of the South West, South East and Eastern regions and our total of MPs and council leaders are small islands in seas of blue. In the face of a national tide, we held on to our minority council leadership by 1 seat and outperformed national results.

Our parliamentary party and centrally focussed apparatus misses the fact that in many places like Milton Keynes, we already do win elections. Time and time again, in marginal seats like Plymouth, Rossendale, Cambridge and Reading, we show we can win and then deliver for local people. Yet time and time again we are dismissed as “just local elections” and irrelevant to the broader debate. When local government is included in the debate it is generally through the prism of post-industrial big cities and larger metropolitan areas.

I have absolutely nothing against those areas. My family are from Liverpool and I grew up in East Lancashire. I know the damage the Tories did to those places and how much we did during the last Labour government to regenerate them. I totally understand the devastation being brought to well run councils in those areas by Tory cuts to local government.

Yet in order to have a Labour government we also need to speak to people who vote Labour at local level but do not trust us nationally. This is the same for places like Northampton, Peterborough, Stroud and Waveney, as well as places like Swindon and MK.

Milton Keynes was built on the principles of a better home, a better job, opportunity and a better environment. It is an aspirational city. Between 2012 and 2014 the numbers of Labour councillors rose from 9 to 25 based on an ambitious programme of building council houses, delivering affordable housing and the living wage. We talked about skills and jobs, about creating wealth and everyone being able to have opportunity for a better life. We did so in a way that listened to people and what they wanted us do, and brought people together rather than dividing and leaving people out. Our citizens want a council that improves the city for everyone and doesn’t just talk about cuts; they know it’s hard, but so are their family finances.

Local government doesn’t have all the answers but we do have some. Over the next five years we are also the only people in England who have any actual power to be able to mitigate the worst of what the Tory government will bring. We need to listen more to our towns and smaller cities, like Northampton, Peterborough, Swindon and MK – all places we need to win.

Labour in Local Government has ideas; the party and leadership contenders would do well to listen to us.

Cllr Pete Marland is Leader of Milton Keynes Council