‘For clues about Starmerism, look no further than Barking and Dagenham’

Those trying to read the runes of a Labour government may be drawn to manifestos, TV debates and long-form interviews. But once parties are in office, influence often comes far from the Westminster village.

Take the way that governments often have a ‘favourite council’. Thatcher adored Wandsworth, which famously kept council tax low and privatised services. Blair described Lambeth as “more New Labour than New Labour”. The Tories have recently fawned over Ben Houchen’s Teesside mayoralty. Should a corner of East London, with links to the top of the Starmer project, be a new government’s favourite council?

An electoral shockwave

Barking and Dagenham’s story is the story of modern Britain. 26,000 ‘homes for heroes’ built between 1921 and 1935 at the Becontree estate, the largest in the world. The Ford factory, opened in 1931, employing at its height 58,000 people. Ideal conditions for the post-war welfare state: a growing industrial economy and full employment for men, underpinned by unpaid female care.

But these conditions did not last. The pressures of globalisation led to a dramatic loss of jobs at Ford; today just 2,000 people are employed there. ‘Right to buy’ reduced the availability of cheap housing, weakening financial security for local residents.

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It took 2006’s electoral shockwave for the world to notice the changes that had been happening for decades in Barking and Dagenham. In local elections that year, 12 members of the British National Party (BNP) were elected, despite the party standing just 13 candidates.

This inspired a radical change of direction by the council, as described in a new essay for Demos by Chris Naylor, the former Chief Executive of Barking and Dagenham Council. This new direction had three key ingredients: public service reform, economic growth and relational politics.

Public service reform

There’s much talk in Westminster of the ‘reform fairy’: the idea that politicians talk up public service reform with little clarity on the details. This narrative ignores the many and growing examples of practical local reform, from Wigan to Gateshead, Kirklees to Plymouth. Chris’s essay provides more evidence that ‘reform fairy’ is rapidly becoming ‘reform reality’.

In Barking and Dagenham, Community Solutions integrated a wide range of services previously organised separately.

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The ‘front door’ of children and adult social care, homelessness services, drug and alcohol service, debt and money advice, domestic abuse, employment support and libraries were all brought together in a major, ambitious reform to the council’s services.

This delivered impressive results: the new department cost 35% less to run than the previous operation while improving outcomes for residents. By 2020, no Barking and Dagenham homeless families were accommodated in hotels and rough sleeping was virtually eliminated. Within three years, Community Solutions had tripled the number of families’ lives turned around, through its Troubled Families programme.

Economic growth

Efforts to improve public services have to be accompanied by efforts to improve the economy; a neat distinction cannot be made between ‘social’ problems, which public services typically try to address, and economic problems.

Barking and Dagenham was well aware of this, identifying early in their reform journey that the borough had an economic development problem.

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Its core analysis identified that things would only get better for residents if they could become more financially resilient, with housing costs a key driver of resilience.

In response, the council formed ‘Be First’, a borough-owned growth, regeneration and development company. Launched in 2018, it was aimed to improve the pace and scale of growth, but also its direction, with a key emphasis on housing delivery to reduce housing costs. Housing delivery tripled and a quarter of all affordable homes being built in London are being built in Barking and Dagenham.

Relational politics

Policy change was reinforced by political change. By 2006, the contact rate of local councillors was less than 10%; by 2010 it had increased to more than 90%.

The information from these conversations helped inform and underpin the wider strategy, driving the demand for change. These policy and political changes delivered hard political wins: the council is now almost entirely Labour and local MPs have bucked national trends in recent elections.

Starmerism in one council?

Chris’s essay shows that with a recipe of public service reform, economic growth and relational politics, these challenges can be taken on and defeated. Encouragingly, this agenda feels close to what Labour has spoken about wanting to achieve in government. The party’s most radical proposals are for a shakeup of the planning regime; shadow ministers have spoken widely about the need for reform, not just more spending; and Starmer has spoken extensively about the need to rebuild trust in politics.

This alignment between local and national Labour shouldn’t come as a surprise. Morgan McSweeney, Labour’s all powerful campaigns director, cut his teeth helping to defeat the BNP in the borough, an experience he has written about.

In doing so, he worked alongside Jon Cruddas, the outgoing MP for Dagenham and Raintree. Though he has since criticised the Starmer project, his ‘dignity of labour’ agenda has certainly shaped Labour rhetoric, if not its policy too.

After the election

The next government’s in tray looks eerily similar to those tackled by Chris and colleagues in Barking and Dagenham – but also at other councils up and down the country that have championed different ways of working.

In Wigan, Gateshead and Kirklees, among others, you can see a new model emerging that focuses on shifting power between citizens and local authorities, as articulated by brilliant leaders such as New Local through their ‘Community Power’ agenda, Collaborate CIC and the Centre for Public Impact’s ‘Human Learning Systems’, and now in Demos’ Liberated Public Services, inspired by pioneering work in Gateshead, and a forthcoming Green Paper on community governance.

What are those challenges? A nation scarred by decades of deindustrialisation. A crisis of trust in politics, as Demos is finding through its election monitoring project, Trustwatch 2024.