In opposition parts of the Labour movement  that have been marginalised in government become more important. This is certainly the case for Local Government and for the Trade Unions. Of course, the unions remain an important source of finance but with local government they will perform a function that is just as important, supporting policy development and the practical piloting of actual policy ideas. The front bench will find life difficult, indeed disorientating, without the support of the civil service policy machine and government budgets to support independent policy thinkers. Of the candidates only David Milliband really has knowledge of policy development in opposition. People doubting DM might reflect that he is the man who authored the report for the John Smith Social Justice Commission. In my view this remains a substantial body of work which still has much relevance for today.

Learning From the Thatcher Years.

During the dark years of ‘79 to ‘97 central government relied a lot on local government but this relationship was far from one of command and control. It was Labour local government who were the innovators and many a front-bench spokesperson took inspiration from their leadership.

Local Government leadership was a theme in the Kirklees discussion, “Is There Life After the Cuts” that I mentioned in my last post. In essence we’ve been here before.

For much of the nation that Thatcher cuts were every bit as devastating as the current proposals. Local government was at the heart of the fightback, not just for ideological reasons but because they were ruthlessly focussed on the needs of their community. In my own area Birmingham the council leadership focussed like a laser on jobs and work-based skills. Their policies did not automatically find favour with the left — the neglect of school budgets was a real problem — but there was no doubt what they were about. And the same could be said for councils up and down the country.

Much of what we have taken for granted for the last twenty years or so simply did not exist in the early ’80s. Local and regional regeneration work was pioneered by Labour local government. True, Michael Hesletine’s City Challenge programmes that followed rioting was the first real national regeneration programme but it relied on local ideas, infrastructure and local delivery. Council’s pioneered imaginative land development policies, made adult training a priority and looked to invest in new enterprises.

Regeneration Pioneered Locally

Local Government also set out to attract new forms of income. Walk around any major city in the UK today and you will see plaques commemorating the role of European Union (or EC as it was them) Structural Funds in the rebuilding of town centres and much else. These funds did not automatically drop down from Brussels. They were the result of long campaigns and arguments mounted by local government together. Individual councils invested in offices in Brussels, much derided at the time but key to building the right relationships in Brussels and beyond. Collectively, councils created their own networks at both a national level and at international level. The Eurocities network, for example, was created to lever investment funds for large cities.

It is easy to underestimate this as much of what was pioneered then has been taken for granted. The old Metropolitan Counties played a major role in this work. The Met counties often attracted a new and younger type of councillor many of whom were looking to use discretionary funds to pioneer new roles not least because their statutory functions were quite limited. We’re not just talking about the GLC here but sub regional councils in Greater Manchester, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire and so on. Thatcher may have abolished the Met Counties but their ideas and programmes lived on in Met Boroughs and through local partnerships.

Today European Funds are unlikely to be our saviour and our apporach to regeneration will have to be difficult. But creative work at a local level will have thrive in other ways. But new tactics, programmes and ideas will only be developed by local leaders who are prepared to think very differently and who are prepared to take risks. This will involve councils doing things that they are loathed to do, to work more closely with communities, to use their assets far more creatively than in the past and to place them at the centre of programmes that aim to create a different set of benefits or outcomes than can be found by simply looking at land values. We might have to give things up in order to build the future.

Two past leaders — of many — come to mind. Roger Taylor was the Chief Executive of both Manchester and Birmingham councils during those dark years. He argues that well thought out regeneration work — properly argued and fought for — allowed many local councils to replace cut income and to keep the net budgets of councils afloat. They may not have been able to replace cuts in some direct services but they were able to build the influence and profile of the authorities as well as create new benefits for traditional services. For example, schools suffered but also benefited by investment in community educations, the development of dual use recreation and adult education services and in the building of new links with the business sector (predating the work of Training and Enterprise Councils and the subsequent Learning and Skills Agency). Taylor remains optimistic today that solid and imaginative groundwork will yield positive results. Today Taylor is working with the 5 Olympic Boroughs to develop their economic legacy. Together these boroughs have produced an impressive sub regional development plan which — despite economic hardships — is likely to secure new investment. The quality and depth of the analysis work done here and the practical programmes built from it are impressive so much so that no government can afford to ignore them. There are other such impressive pieces of work being undertaken throughout the country.

My second interesting leader takes me back to Huddersfield an Kirklees. Sir John Harman was the leader of Kirklees for many years. His personal philosophy seemed to me then to be light years away from that of many of his peers. He once told me to be relaxed about the changing dynamics and relationships between communities and councils. “For every pound of resource and of power I give away” he told me, “I get ten back in pure influence”. Harman knew that he was more powerful for the real and genuine support of people and communities. The more he invested in them the more supportive they were of him provided he acted as an effective advocate and as a clear strategic thinker when it came to setting up sub regional frameworks for work and delivery.

A New Age of Local Creativity

The challenge facing local government today is to match that level of creativity and risk taking, and to be different. Harsh critics of local government would say that under Labour they have become programme managers and not innovative thinkers. All too often local politicians wait to see what their national bosses want them to do rather than to bang down the doors of Whitehall with their own ideas.

Labour in government talked a lot about freedom and localism but they seldom delivered as effectively as they talked. Some steps forward were taken but even schemes trumpeted as giving more freedoms to excellent council failed to materialise.

So, at a local level we are back where we were. We need a new settlement between local leaders and national leaders. Nationally, Labour needs to understand that its role is to support local creativity, to champion good practice and to defend it in the light of the attacks from the Tories that will inevitably come.

This will take time not least because most local government leaders (especially in the big conurbations) will spend much of the next year dealing with horrendous budget decisions. But they must be bold and find their own space to be creative. It must be clear to local communities and to others just what their priorities are. They must become effective campaigning organisations, advocating openly and effectively on behalf of their communities.

Above all else Labour — at every level — has to properly address local values and to rest back ‘localism’ from the grasp of the Tories.

Exposing the Tories and Big Society

The Tory Big Society idea is fine on rhetoric but is ultimately fuelled by hot air, not least because in practice Tory bosses are ever much the control freaks that they ever were. In Birmingham, Tory leader Mike Whitby has reputedly ordered his officers to bring anything to do with the ‘Big Society’ to him personally. In reality he is the ‘Big’ in Big Society. There seems little real commitment to the giving away of power or to local pluralism in organisation or delivery.

Communities will soon recognise when they have been hoodwinked. Labour must not make the same mistake. Labour nationally will benefit from a generation of local leaders who are encouraged to think creatively and are not worried about flying kites!

Those who advocated a long leadership period did so for the right reasons. They wanted a full and frank debate between candidates and a real chance for the Party membership to join in. But this is not what we’ve had. From the early days of the debate positions haven’t changed very much. There is now some differentiation between the leading candidates but most members I speak to are still undecided, although their choice seems to be between the two Millibands. Yesterday evening I had a phone chat with a London-based politico friend who finally confessed she was bored stiff by the whole thing. She has a point.

What hits me the most is how — even after an election defeat — our leaders seem remain worried about the national press than happy to think aloud. And we do need to think aloud, to fly some kites and be prepared to take risks. The narrow centre ground is not so narrow that it is frightening. Take this small face on its own and we presented with a massive problem in that the last leadership seems to have been utterly discredited by the population at large (with some honourable exceptions such as Darling). At the heart of this problem is Labour’s financial policy failure when, only a few years ago, we were sure that this would be one of the rocks of our legacy. Of course, there are great successes. We see very few terrible schools now and we have many wonderful new public service buildings including hospitals. But our successes are really measured by the money we put in rather than the results we got out. We have a lot of thinking to do — and a new leadership must be brave enough to do this in spite of the press.

In just a few months it has become clear that terms of our debate are going to have to be muddier than we thought. Our programmes have to adopted for a world that has changed dramatically over a couple of months.

Let’s consider just two changes: the challenge of the cuts and the challenge of electoral reform both nationally and locally.

Life after the cuts

Six weeks ago I spoke at a meeting organised by the Huddersfield Salon which was debating “Life After the Cuts”. The meeting was held against the backdrop of very severe local cuts which were devastating the local lvoluntary sector and many council services. The other speaker was the Leader of Kirklees council Mehboob Khan. The organisers were worried that the meeting would effectively become lynch mob with Mehboob as its main targets.

Fortunately the meeting didn’t turn out like that. Instead what we had was one of the most reasonable and sensible discussions about the cuts and their implications that I had ever witnessed. I shall say more about my own presentation in later posts, but we had a very mature discussion about the problems faced by pubic services. The audience wasn’t all public sector but even those from the private sector understood the pivotal nature of public spending in underpinning their world. Contributor after contributor spoke about how — despite the best budgets they could ever remember — they couldn’t really justify much of what have been going on. There was a strong feeling that we needed to re-think the role of the public sector and how it operated.

Before some of you fly off the handle I should make it clear that most of the problems discussed came from the same perspective. The problems were caused by the micro-management of central government who gave local agencies funds but then refused to trust them with the spend. As workers in schools, hospitals and local government know this obsession with micro management and lack of trust really impeded progress, often obscured achievement and lead to a range of strange — sometimes bizarre outcomes.

The next leader has to begin to unravel this. But it’s not rocket science. The future lies in localism, devolved services the bravery to allow local communities to promote difference and bespoke services that focus on local needs. Public policy in the future needs to focus on outcomes and to properly understand good practice and this does not mean the mad, obsessive target culture that so many of our Ministers loved.

Alternative Vote and Mayoral Ballots

A second area that will have a profound effect on the Party will be changes to the electoral system. Consider Alternative Vote. Even with this weak constitutional change Labour will have to think about hard about electoral alliances and agreements of how to distribute second preference votes. This simple change should lead to a rethink of how pluralism is looked at across the centre left.

Ah, but you say we might not have this system. True the national referendum might fail to deliver change but I’m not sure Labour would come out of this with much credit. Our line in opposing the referendum choices is a poor one. A real rethink is needed here otherwise Simon Hughes and others will keep beating up our lot on Newsnight and elsewhere. Charges of gross hypocrisy are always hard to fight against.

But even if we don’t get Alternative Vote nationally we look like seeing major change in the way politics and the big cities work.

Take my home town of Birmingham where we may well have to fight a Mayoral Ballot in 2012. Birmingham is currently run by an alliance of the Tories and the Lib Dems. It is by in large a comfortable alliance that works without major internal disputes. Nobody here in Birmingjham was surprised by the national coalition.

In a Mayoral Ballot we can assume that the Lib Dems will recommend giving their second preferences to the Tories. To win Labour will have to think hard about its approach; how will it secure the second and third preferences needed to win?

Labour in Birmingham will have to think more subtly about its programme and policy as well as its campaign strategy. Lib Dem voters may be won over by sensible argument rather than a strategy of just ridiculing the Lib Dem. New conversations will have to be held with fringe parties such as Respect (who in Birmingham still control 3 council seats and command reasonable votes across the inner city).

Connecting Progressives

But, in Birmingham and elsewhere, will will have to look beyond traditional Party debates. Consider our BME communities. Many are naturally drawn towards a Labour of Centre LEft position yet they don’t feel represented by Labour. Labour may hold the seats in the areas in which these communities are strongest but look at the election turnout and the age demographic of those who are voting. It’s depressing. To be sure of winning elections under new systems we have to increase turnout and participation in groups who have opted out on a massive scale. This means rethinking policy as well as organisational practice.

But above all else this means a commitment to building relationships with these communities in a way we haven’t seen before.

Outward Facing and Outward Thinking

My main worry is that whoever is the new leader is going to be immediately dragged into a whole series of internal discussions, debates, skirmishes and fights over the arguments of yesterday. I’d bet on this happening.

Many of these discussions will be about things that are important to us, or have been very important to us. But the need to build bridges and to be an outwardly focussed party will be paramount. If the new leader fails to do this we will be condemning ourselves to life in the political wilderness for a long time.

So, to the vote …

Like many Labour Party members I truly haven’t made my mind up which way I shall vote yet, though I do know who I won’t be voting for.

I shall be looking to support someone who understands the importance of pluralism on the centre left, who is committed to building a Party that has community engagement at its core, and who really understands localism.

I shall spend much of my bank holiday weekend thoroughly reading the documents on the websites of the candidates and only then will I finally make up my mind.

But I’m a sad political geek. Many members won’t have the stomach for this. Much of the debate will have gone unnoticed by Labour voters and would-be sympathisers.

Whoever wins must start by recognising that we have actually gone backwards during this leadership campaign. They will come into office playing catch-up.

Thanks to Comedia’s Phil Wood for pointing me in the direction of Barcelona’s new Intercultural Strategy. Their strategy is worth reading (in English). Much of this stuff is a question of imagination and creativity and doesn’t necessarily depend on great investment. Phil — who studies such things — reckons this is the best intercultural plan that he’s seen

Something for our cities and local authorities to think about?

PLA Barcelona Interculuralitat

I suspect that, this morning, many of these people are feeling a little relieved. They will feel it could have been much worse and to that extent the coalition pre-budget media campaign has been successful. So far Labour’s attacks on the budget have focussed on the Lib Dems and their election promises. This is fine as far as it goes but it is not enough in showing how everyone will loose out of this budget.

There are some very worrying and direct cuts here. You’ll know much about them but I’ll just flag up Housing Benefit. The rhetoric here is that they will be hitting landlords who have just been profiteering. Why, they say, should be housing people in property that they simply could not afford to keep on if they were in employment?

Good questions perhaps. But this is the result of nearly twenty years of housing policy. This started with the Thatcher government who wanted to see a big expansion in the private rented sector. Of course, they cut back massively the local government house building programme. During much of this time there has been a real under supply in social housing that would be suitable for larger families. this demand has been taken up by the private sector. Maybe it is time to cut this back but at the same time we are ravaging the spending of the Homes and Communities Agency.

Most of the ‘action’ though is not directly in the personaly-focussed bots of the budget. The real pain — to all of us — will be seen in the mainstream budgets of local authorities and key infrastructure agencies such as the Homes and Communities Agency. Rhetoric might focus on the bureaucracy of Whitehall but Whitehall does not deliver much itself, rather it passes the funds on to the agencies who provide our services.

Both local government and the Homes and Communities Agency are facing 25% cuts. These will have an extraordinary effect on services to all of us. Take a local authority that is also a Local Education Authority. the schools budget will not be effected and so the 25% will have to come from 50 to 60% of the total budget. Government is also meddling in other services, for example decreeing that bi-weekly rubbish collections should end where they have been introduced. Fine, but given that this area is not immune to cuts what kind of future bin collection services can we expect?

Services to disadvantaged communities will be hit, but so will those that serve the rest of us. Your local library service? 25% cut or more? Youth Services? It looks as if these will be savaged? Local arts and leisure centres? Similar. Community halls? Municipal golf courses? Swimming pools? Local fitness centres? Then what about consumer protection? Adult education? Doesn’t have a prayer I feel. And what about the state of those roads and pavements? And consider the local improvement schemes that can make a difference to not only marginal areas but to the suburbs as well.

On Newsnight earlier this week John Mann MP made a very good point about the welfare state. There is a deal on offer here. The middle class will pay in more than they get out, but it is important that they feel they are getting something out of the deal. What if there are very few perceived benefits to whole swathes of local communities? The same ‘deal’ operates at a local, community and local government level.

I’d hazard a guess that many of those who breathed a sigh of relief last night will be very unhappy as they see their local services collapse.

It is here that Labour needs to act quickly in order to properly pin the blame on central government. Labour runs many councils; it knows where the pain is going to come. It is time for a risk, to take these issues above the town hall and to make them national issues. This Labour needs to do i the coming weeks during the budget debate. It can’t wait until they leadership election is out of they way.

Labour also needs to rediscover itself as a local and national campaigning force. There will be lots of opportunities to forge new alliances i campaigns that bring together local service cuts and government policy. Many will be nervous. After all is a local cut a council cut or a central cut? Could something be done differently at a local level?

I’ve seen this before during the Tatcher years, local politicians nervous of exposing the true state of their infrastructure (schools, swimming pools, etc) because they feared they would get the blame.

This is precisely why a clear, coherent and active set of campaigns need to be developed within a national framework and expressed nationally and locally.

When those local cuts manifest themselves in the experiences of ordinary people and residents — across all sectors of a town or city — the message should have been out there for a while.

The Alliance has been clever in managing expectations. Labour needs to be just as focussed at telling people who is about to happen. After all, in Town Halls up and down the country we know what is being planned!

“This one-day conference will set out the drivers of growth over the next decade and the roles that cities and regions can play in driving economic recovery over the next decade, drawing on UK and international case studies”.

In addition, the Work Foundation will be publishing new research from that reviews the geography of economic recovery and the policy levers that can support cities and regions to drive economic prosperity and social inclusion.

Should be interesting. The conference is not cheap but I’m sure voluntary organisations can negotiate a discount. I’m sure the research will be published on the web anyhow:

Conference wesbite

Work Foundation

A number of local government finance experts I know had expected a general reduction in overall grant through mainstream formulas. This may yet happen but what are seeing at the moment is a dramatic attack on what we call specific grants, the ‘top up’ funding programmes that in the main support urban authorities. There’s no doubt that urban local authorities are going to be taking a real pounding.

Often this funding is controlled by local authorities but increasingly these days the partnership world means that key local development funds go through other mechanisms and other partners. For example, social housing programmes funded through the Home and Communities Agency are often critical to a wider partnership programme. In basic terms, the economic development strategy of a local authority is as much dependent on these programmes as it is on its own finance.

Last week agencies across the country were looking at taking millions out of local programmes. Often the reduction figures were being revised upwards as the week went on. Across the country agencies are having to tell the communities they work with that the projects that had developed with them — to meet the identified concerns and needs of communities — were now no longer going to happen.

Many of these communities are not of the vocal and skilled middle class variety. While the rhetoric of the ‘Big Society’ continues to float around the national media the reality at a community level is far harsher.

The issue of whether this level of cuts is actually needed will be left for another day. The reality of life on the front line is that times will be very tough for the foreseeable future. For Labour local authorities the old values must endure, i.e. the commitment to supporting those in most difficulty. And here lies the challenge.

Up to now we have seen a bureaucratic response to the problems. Local politicians have had no choice but to profile budgets with swinging cuts.  However, our challenge as a Party locally runs well beyond this. How we commit ourselves to the future may way have a big impact in how voters see reductions in spend and programmes locally.

For example, I know of one local authority that has engaged consultants to profile a 25% reduction in its ‘controllable’ budget. This is an extraordinary cut. Checking this out with other financial experts suggested that the real planning needed to be around 12 or 13%. Now a 12% cut in budget is bad enough but a 25% slash is twice as great.

So, why aim for such cuts? Well, it is always good to have some room to manoeuvre and some space to grow new initiatives but this would seem to be excessive. Further, the message that this sends out to local workers, trade unions and the voluntary sector is devastating. They will be well aware that central government is inflicting the pain but sympathy will be tempered by the view of a local authority falling over itself to simply administer things well.

We’ve been here before, back in the 80’s and early nineties. It is worth considering how local political leaders played the game then.

It was during this time that the local economic development world was created. Many of the things we take for granted simply were not around then. Local government had to look to wherever it could find support to move on. Europe made a big difference so much so that many of the best strategies for the renaissance of our cities came out of this period.

What characterised this work was a bloody minded and determined focus on what local people needed. For many urban authorities jobs were the key. Council worked with a great deal of energy, imagination and creativity to bring in extra investment, from Europe and elsewhere. To some extent ideology was parked. What was needed was a pragmatic response that worked.

Times were difficult in the 80’s. One ex Chief Executive recently took me through his strategy at the time. He couldn’t exactly replace spending that had been cut like-for-like it was possible to keep the quantum of the budget intact, which was very important for the local economy.

We are now in a very different time to then, for example, European Structural Funds won’t come to our rescue in the way they did then. We will have to find new solutions and radically creative strategies to support our communities.

But the first step is to tell the communities that we are with them, that they — and not central government — are the main priority. We need an honest debate which is clear about difficulties. We need to be engaging local people in new partnerships that are probably just as much about campaigning as about service delivery. And above all else we will need to stress the pragmatic nature of our commitment. We’ll have to do everything we can to secure progress. It is very likely that creative responses will see a greater (not lesser) challenge to the local state. Services may have to managed in a different way. Assets may have to be transferred to other users to secure them. Above all else we will need a far sharper idea of where what investment there is can be targeted.

Put simply, it will be increasingly difficult to attract new resources and funds into those areas that need the greatest support. Investing in physical developments will be very difficult. Investment may be smaller but there is still much that can be done in making communities more vibrant, in developing the skill base, in managing neighbourhoods more effectively and so on.

This is the creativity that we need locally. And it s a creativity of the politician and not just the planner. Our pledge to communities needs to be that we’ll boldy go where we’ve not gone before …

Of course, cuts do not have to be identified in a totally cold way. For example, the work that Lambeth is doing in consulting communities about reductions is very interesting. But it won’t stop the cuts and it won’t make people feel better about them. At the end of the day very difficult and unpopular decisions will have to be taken.

OUr fight back starts with this commitment to creativity and with a language that is not bureaucratic and government-centered.

I do believe that some of our most creative minds work at a local level. A new kind of engagement is critical. And key to this is a belief that our own destiny, at a local level, are still within our own control.

The Compass conference was — as usual — a diverse affair. There were plenty of 50 plus delegates but just as many from the younger side of 30. Most — I would guess 80% — were Labour Party members or ex-members. But there were people here who were committed campaigners in many fields: campaigners against poverty; campaigners for equal rights; campaigners for civil liberties. There were those working for more democratic institutions and more democratic systems. There were people looking to create a more devolved system of government, others working toward a new economic settlement, a revised system of banking and a new system of global economic and financial management. And, of course everywhere there was a demand for a more sustainable country and a more ecologically aware set of global policies.

It was in this setting that the five Labour Leadership contenders came together for the first hustings event that ordinary members were able to participate in fully. There will be other events for members to take part in, across the regions. But how did this one work out? I’ll look at the candidates in the order they spoke (the order in which they were nominated). Each candidate had 90 seconds to make an initial statement. Questions were then taken from the floor with each candidate being able to reply for up to a minute, the aim being to maximise the time that was spent dealing with the concerns of members.

David Milliband gave an assured performance. He is relaxed in this campaign and speaks a new language that seems significantly different to what we have heard over the last ten years or so. DM likes to identify himself in the wide sweep of centre left tradition, one which looks to cooperative principles of communities rather than simply the organised structure of Labour and the Unions. Labour is also a better Party when it is rooted in, and working on behalf of, genuine community. His performance grew more effective as he answered questions.

Last weekend I went to a two hour session DM ran in Birmingham. Many of the themes were the same. One thing was missing though, In Birmingham DM talked directly about humility about past mistakes. This went down well. This was missing yesterday — at least in the direct form of the Birmingham meeting. He was though the most upfront candidate in acknowledging real problems in the handling of the 10p tax fiasco and in financial policy in general.

Ed Milliband is probably the closest of the candidates to the Compass membership in the room. His 90 second pitch almost brought the house down.  This was the speech of someone from a different political generation.  He was the most convincing candidate when talking about a definitely new style of politics. His call for 50% of the Shadow Cabinet to be women was greeted by rapturous applause and cheering. EM was the only candidate to talk about industrial strategy and industrial renewal. And he committed himself to the establishment of a High Pay Commission; there was a case for making the bonus tax permanent.

EM is the one to watch in this campaign. He is not the finished article and real doubts linger as to whether he is simply not ready. He needs more time to develop a platform and to show that he has moved out of Brown’s macho, male dominated world. Has this all just come a little too soon for him? Nevertheless, momentum really matters and he can only grow during this campaign. Here he was with his natural constituency but if he can carry this on into the regional hustings the others might have real problems.

Ed Balls was clearly the most unpopular of the big three there at the event and he knew it. He never really looked comfortable or at home. Balls is hot on the tradition of the Labour Party and on the trade unions. I saw him at a local fundraiser in the run up to the election and his pitch was clear then. There’s not much talk about cementing a wider alliance of the centre left or of making the Labour Party a vehicle fit to attract a broader swathe of the centre left.

While Balls stresses change, he convinced less as a man who understands the failures of the last regime. He seemed less contrite and exhibited far less humility for defeat than the others.

In the run up to the hustings Balls seemed to the person that most delegates had taken against the most. They didn’t like his interventions on immigration (and clearly neither did the other leading candidates). Delegates also didn’t seem to like the way he was moving to free himself with any connection with Brown’s leadership or campaign. As a result Balls knew he was not in a favoured place and seemed to try very little in winning hearts and minds. Balls seemed the big looser in this debate. You wouldn’t say that he was completely out of his depth but he was a long way off the pace. To me he is a man who now has to make his open political way in the world, to find his own politics: they are nowhere near defined enough.

Andy Burnham is the candidate most of us knew least about and I wonder if we really know any more now. We know he’s an ordinary guy from an ordinary background. He went to an ordinary school and an ordinary University. So what! Where are the ideas and the policies that come out of this?

Look at the Burnham leadership website and there’s very little content (compare it with EM’s for example). And I feel there is little there. In many ways he seemed the most traditional of the candidates, less willing to talk about the mistakes of the past. He had come to support Alternative Vote reform reluctantly as he’d seen what people wanted during the election. But this simply re-enforced the view that he didn’t get the real change that was going on the country.

Burnham is clearly a nice chap and handled his questions politely. It was suggested — unfairly perhaps — that if he appeared in your ward you’d be keen to encourage him in, perhaps propose him as Ward Secretary next year!

Sadly, Burnham comes across as a one-dimensional, old-fashioned, northern politician. There is nothing here to speaks to diverse and cosmopolitan movements, to the young and to those who remain skeptical of the worst of New Labour. Often a good showing in a leadership election can lead to the securing of a major job in government. On this showing I doubt that even this is going to happen to Burnham.

Thank goodness for Diane Abbot. It was obvious why she needed to be on the ballot paper. I guess very few people in the hall have any intention of voting for her but they cheered and hollered all the way through her contributions.

Diane provides a powerful contrast to the others. She reminds us that there is an alternative language and orthodoxy to that of New Labour. She shows that the progressive coalitions of the future are far more diverse than is the shape of the PLP. And Diane is the only one blunt enough to even mention Iraq let alone declare she opposed the war. Maybe the others all wanted to believe that Ira and Afghanistan are no longer real issues. But the audience let the panel know that they agreed — almost to a woman and a man — that they agreed with Abbot.

Diane doesn’t have a campaign manager or even anyone running a website (as yet). I hope she takes things a bit more seriously for she does not come over as a nut. It may well be that Diane Abbot more accurately reflects the future of centre left leaders than many of us would believe.

Diane needs to take this campaign more seriously and invest more time in proper organisation. The reason? Diane’s performance is devastatingly effective at showing just how one-dimensional the men are. Her presence alone will spur the others one and I reckon help them become more radical, more brave and more modern.

Finally, while I couldn’t really see the point of the Burnham candidature and can se the point of Abbot’s. I can see here playing a real role as a shadow minister — something I wouldn’t have even thought about before yesterday.

So, there we go. There’s a lot yet to play for. I suppose (at the moment) David Milliband comes across as the most assured candidate and as the best prepared when it comes to the wider sweep of policies. But is he really the man to take us forward?

At lot depends on how long we think we have in opposition. A longer ball game will tip the odds towards Ed I reckon.

I’ve not made up my mind yet and I’m looking forward to the rest of these debates.

I will say that none of these leadership contenders should not be complacent. There were a couple of other politicians at the conference who sounded more convincing, spoke with greater authority and really did map out a set of policies that spoke for the protection of ordinary people across a wide range of traditional Labour concerns.

The first was Caroline Lucas. Lucas impressed for the second year running . You don’t doubt that her call for a real partnership of the new left is not genuine.

The second was Jon Cruddas who — as we have come to expect — delivered his usual, amazing speech. Cruddas is not an orator, indeed he tends to read out his speech as if it was a university assignment. But it a measure of the content that all kinds of people after were inspired, many talking about how it bought tears to their eyes. I’m going to see if we cannot get the text of this reproduced on the web. Cruddas is a clever man. He knows the power of his message and he knows that things are even more powerful coming from someone who has no ambition for the top political jobs.

The third was Chukka Umunna. Chukka may have only just been elected this year but he is one hell of impressive cookie. There is a steeliness to his commitment to change. Chukka not only understands the new world but he is of it. Compass was wise to give him the last address. This was the future calling.

But in closing I’ll mention two other Labour MPs.

Lisa Nandy is one of the new intake, the new member for Wigan. At an education fringe she impressed immensely. Lisa — along with Chukka — is one of the new young Compass members that are going to be launched on the Party with devastating effect. Lisa is a fine campaigner and I reckon in today’s climate she’ll go down very well in Wigan. She’ll also impress nationally for all of the right reasons.

My final name check goes to Jon Trickett MP who was back to his effective best at the same education fringe. Trickett is a plumber by background and not an intellectual. But he is a man who understands what is important and what is right. He led the campaign against the 2006 Education Act. For the last couple of years Trickett has been working in Number 10. I reckon we’ll get more value from him now. He is a man with an immense contribution to make.

Looking at the budget coverage and the the PR spin you would think that manufacturing is now the flavour of the month. Larry Elliott (in the Guardian) even suggested the government felt it was now time to “hug a metal basher …’

Well maybe not.

With limited room to manoeuvre Darling did focus on the needs of industry and small business. There’s to be a continued push on making loans easier, changes in capital allowances that will help and so on. All of these are to be welcomed but they are small beer in what is turning out to me another very rapid and dramatic shift, in the landscape of UK manufacturing industry.

After years of neglect we are beginning to see the value once again in making things. But, even if we get the policies right, building back our base will take a long time. This relies, though, on decisions that seem not to have been taken yet. How are we setting out to manage the economy? Are we moving away from our obsession with financial services? It is not yet clear. The UK does not export to the high growth countries in the world. Do we have a strategy to put that right? Not clear either.

And who can object to a focus on green investment and advanced manufacturing? Nobody. But political activists would be wise to think beyond the spin and hype. The new Green Investment Bank will benefit from £1 billion derived from the sell off of assets. It will make small investments in key, strategic developments. And they will be small. The annual investment need in renewable energy investment is estimated to be £50 billions. You do the maths and you can see why for many this is not a significant move. An in investing more in advanced manufacturing and green technologies we are playing a desperately late game of catch-up with key competitors.

All of this means that life is likely to be difficult for some time to come for our manufacturing heart lands. I’ve focussed on this before, but a long term investment in cultural development and urban renaissance may have made a big difference to our cities but they are left more dependent on the public purse than they were before and we have to worry about that.

It is probably no surprise then that adult unemployment continues to rise. Supporting the under 24s — especially graduates — makes sense but the nagging feeling is that this group are especially sensitive because of the way in which youth unemployment was on the rise even before the collapse of the economy.

But where is the support for the growing army of unemployed adults? Surely we can’t expect all of these folks to be taken care of by a reflated housing market (and in any case it isn’t reflating anywhere near enough in areas where the unemployed are concentrated).

The argument for a green ‘new deal’, for employment programmes that can give people back their dignity is now overwhelming. Such programmes would not only put money back into people’s pockets but would also allow us to provide access to key vocational training that is crucial to supporting retraining. Many of these training programmes are still not supported through government programmes.

This silence on supporting the adult unemployed is now really worrying. Of the main parties on the Lib Dems are properly focussing on this.

One of the most pressing tasks facing national politicians is to protect the adult unemployed. We should be a little worried also of proposed changes in Housing Benefit. I’ve no doubt HB is in need of reform. But the discussion yesterday suggested that it was somehow the fault of claimants that their housing rental was so high, when in reality this is a fault of the housing market.

Many members will be frustrated by this not least because all of the new selections will be dealt with through NEC rules in which they select the shortlists. Peter Kenyon has documented this on his blog and loyalists like Luke Akehurst take a different view. I’m happy to let them battle this one out, but there are some profound implications to all of this that need to be addressed and dealt with.

One of the key tasks for Labour — over the next Parliament — is to reconnect with communities and voters. It will not be enough to simply try and be even better at spin. It will be ludicrous to build a long term strategy by trying to squeeze even more out of a shrinking band of loyalists. Labour will need to rebuild its base and its membership. And in order to do that it will have to change the way it works as well as the way it looks to the outside world. Whatever you think of James Purnell he certainly has a point when he says that the future of political organisation is to be found in community organising.

In all of this the selection of candidates is important. Ideally, we want candidates who properly understand the communities they are representing. This is not to say that they should all be local but it does mean that outsiders should have a proper run at things before an election is called. Candidates need time to get to know their communities and communities want to get to know their candidates.

Some of these last minute candidates may well be very good for their constituencies. Jack Dromey is a case in point. Birmingham Erdington faces a nasty right wing threat and the seat probably need a bruiser.

But what kind of campaign can be mounted in eight weeks? Not much of one I fear.

The Party — the NEC in particular — really needs to take stock of all of this after the election. We really can’t go through this again. We’re looking like laughing stocks.

Who knows why all of these people are going. Perhaps some are just knackered. Perhaps some just know they are going to loose. And perhaps No 10 just wants to fix the PLP before a potential Leadership Succession.

Whatever the case, a modern, democratic party that is committed to genuine partnership with communities should not behave in this way. Ultimately, it will be the Party that suffers.

A long post follows!

Planning is one of those areas of public service and public management that is mind-boggingly difficult to deal with, not least because it has to work in a multi dimensional way. Planning policies need to meet national guidelines that match the national needs of the day. There is a regional dimension as well as sub regional concerns. Planning authorities (local councils) try to develop authority wide policies as well as dealing with localised needs and concerns. And, of course, communities often have a great deal of interest in the plans for the development of their locality. It is no surprise that the quest to develop the perfect planning system will probably never be met.

I was surprised when heard Shadow spokesman make a speech recently about the future of regeneration. The Green Paper was her main topic of conversation yet although it had been published a few days before few of the audience had heard of it. I became suspicious and had to read it. And I think my suspicions were confirmed. This is a document cloaked in the language of community and which could well be seen as a developer’s dream.

The basic pitch is rather predictable. Labour’s planning system is slow and cumbersome, bureaucratic and inflexible and pays little real heed of the concerns of communities. Having worked a lot over the last few years with senior managers in the wider West Midlands I understand some of their real concerns. But few of these really come from the planning system itself but from government policies such as ‘Prescott’s home building targets’. More of this later.

The Tories will sweep all of Labour’s nonsense away. They will replace it with ‘radical reform’. The Tory answer is to create an ‘Open Source’ planning system. What?

We will use an innovative Open Source approach to overhaul how planning works from top to bottom. This will decentralise and streamline the planning system and allow it to focus on promoting sustainable development that local communities want

.. localising control over planning decisions is only one part of the package of modifications that are needed to create a new Open Source planning system and help to kick-start development.

Well, it’s trendy (open source) and all about communities and sustainable development. It must be good then. Until you start thinking about it.

Getting Rid Of Regional Planning

Planning has to be inherently bad of course. Regional planning has been introduced by this government to properly co-ordinate the needs of regions. Consider the West Midlands. Land development of infrastructure development has to reflect the needs of the whole region and not just one little bit of it. Many smaller, suburban authorities, hate to consider the needs of Birmingham and yet their economies depend on it, many of their citizens work in it and in many ways their prosperity depends on it. Of course, there are conflicts, rows and communities who perceive themselves as loosing and others who are content with outcomes. This is inherent in a planning system.

So, if we abolish Regional Planning what do we put in its place?

Local plans will be at the heart of everything. More about this later put you have to work hard to find something that sits in between the immediately local and the national:

We do anticipate that local authorities will want to work with appropriate adjoining local authorities to plan the various types of infrastructure required to support future and ongoing development in their areas. For this purpose we will encourage unitary or upper-tier authorities to take a strategic view and take the lead in compiling Infrastructure Plans, which will set out how those authorities intend to deliver infrastructure (e.g. waste, roads, etc.) consistent with the local plans adopted in each local area

Experience suggests that many will be very cagey about collaboration. Surely we need a system in which all local authorities do collaborate. We need a system that ensures they do. And we need a regional (and not national) system of resolving differences and disputes. This system suggests that local authorities may be able to ‘pick and mix’ their partners. You could — for example — decide that you want to ignore the needs of you major core city and focus on the suburban needs of you and your neighbours. Parochialism my often seem good but it seldom leads to enlightened and wise decision making. I’m not scaremongering here. In my region there are historical examples of local authorities wanting to pretend that they exist in some other place, the ignores the existence of their big neighbours.

So, we will encourage a strategic view across an cluster of authorities. But what on earth does that mean?

Never mind though, we can rest assured because everything will be ‘Open Source’

In keeping with the philosophy of our Open Source approach, all this information will be published in an Open Source format on the web – so that it is accessible and all the information is presented in a meaningful manner.

No other detail is given. It is mindless jibberish.

The Local Plan

So, if there is no regional collaboration we have to rely almost entirely on the local plan. There are of course already local plans and local planning frameworks. But these are Labour ones and therefore useless.

The difference will be in collaborative democracy. Sounds good.

Recent academic research has found collaborative democracy – the idea that citizens should be actively involved in making the kind of decisions hitherto reserved for bureaucrats and elected representatives – to be a highly successful concept.

Who could argue with that? But what does it mean?

Local plans will begin at a ground level and every citizen approached to take part. The trouble is that this already happens, although I suppose a leaflet through every door might make it a little different.

My community is a pretty switched-on place. Civic energy levels are high and local societies, community trusts and the like exist all over the place. But local groups such as Friends of the Earth are always having to work hard to get people to take planning consultations seriously. I recently chaired a public meeting on creating a sustainable community. About 50 people spent two hours happily discussing all kinds of things. But when the FOE spokesman urged people to take their local planning discussion seriously you could see people’s eyes glazing over.

Any collaborative process that cut through these difficulties would not only be expensive but would require the use of individuals and agencies that are very skilled in consultation and conflict resolution. So, what would the Tories do?

a role for the planning authority itself in helping neighbourhoods to develop their visions and in brokering a rational and coherent plan for the area as a whole, on the basis of negotiation with each of the neighbourhoods and with all the relevant public agencies responsible for infrastructure and the environment.

I’m sorry but they do this already. They may do it badly but there’s nothing in here to show how they themselves can be supported. And of course, Local Authority budgets are going to ravaged. Faced with the choice of supporting elderly care and critical children’s services do we really think there will be in real new investment here? Investment and funding is not mentioned of course.

Planning Gain

But it gets worse. At the moment developers are often required to make a Section 106 — or planning gain contribution — to the local community. Most often this is used to compensate for the loss of a facility or amenity. It is controversial not least as councils often try and use gain generated in one spot to serve a need somewhere else.

The Tories will introduce what they call Local Tariffs — essentially financial payments to communities but they are not quite the same as what happens now,

Developers will be encouraged to do deals with those effected communities in advance of the approval of an application. Sounds fine, but there is a strange definition of locality in here.

Consider a shopping centre which a developer wants to replace. Who does it primarily serve? Those that live nearby? Those who travel to use it? Those who work there? Under this scheme a community could not only learn about a new scheme but find that a key local group had already been bought off with something that might not be in the wider interest of the community?

The onus here is on the developer and the identified community. It is not clear whether the council has a role other than making it clear who the key community consultees are. In reality planning gain contributions are contentious things, often hammered out over time with developers slipping and sliding all over the place.

This is a charter for developers and not for communities. I reduces the hand of those who are there to protect effected communities, yes the much maligned local councils.

Collaborating with Neighbouring Communities

Everyone’s plans are important. There is “.. a presumption that the ‘modules’ of the local plan provided by each neighbourhood will be incorporated in the final plan unless there are strong grounds for modifying them”

But who moderates the competing visions of neighbouring communities? The council I suppose, so there is little that is genuinely radical here.

And this brings to be the last main feature I want to look at, the notion of ‘Immediate Neighbours’.

Immediate Neighbours

… we will legislate to provide that, if more than a small minority of residential neighbours in the immediate vicinity of a new development (of any type) raise any objection, then the conformity of the planning application with the local plan must be formally assessed by the local planning authority. We will consult further on the precise proportion of immediate neighbours whose disapproval will trigger a rejection of the presumption in favour of sustainable development. We will consult further about the definition of “immediate vicinity”.

Fine words but no detail or insight about how this may be achieved.

But (to confirm my fears above)

… we anticipate that in many cases developers will choose to avoid the need for formal assessment of the application, and hence speed up the planning process by reaching voluntary agreements to compensate nearby householders for the impact of the development on their amenity, in return for their support.

Who do they deal with? The Immediate community? The neighbouring community? I reckon under this system there will be many who simply feel that developers have bribed their way through some difficult deal or another.

A Bottom-Up Approach

It is difficult to make a commentary on much of this as it is so waffly.

This genuinely decentralised bottom-up approach to development will strengthen grass roots engagement with the development process. When people feel they have a genuine say on the merits of any development local to them, they are much more likely to take a positive attitude towards the benefits that it will bring.

Nice words. But there’s no details here about how this would be achieved? There’s no idea of where the funding will come from to support communities. The Tories seek to appropriate the language of communitarianism and planning for real but provide little insight into how they will foster real change.

But they will have changed some things decisively.

* Regional Planning Frameworks will go — this will strengthen central government as (of course) they will still be producing national strategies that local authorities will have to follow.

* Local councils will presumably choose who their key neighbours are, simply ignoring others with a strong claim for involvement.

* Developers will work to buy-off local residents in ways that will have less scrutiny and may leave others in the local area powerless to intervene.

* A language of increasing community involvement may well raise expectations that simply will not be met by planners.

* A local authority may use the ‘immediate neighbour’ designation to limit meaningful consultation over actual plans.

We can be consulted over a framework but could well find ourselves with less power to challenge particular developments.

While the language here is one of community, I reckon this had been inspired (or written) by clever developers.

Frameworks and plans may well be bureaucratic but they are clear and transparent to those who understand them, and these are the folks who offer communities technical support. For me, this paper envelopes community planning in fog and mist.

But I suppose what worries me the most is the lack of detail here and the naivety that underpins much of it.

The Tory Green Paper is nothing more than an elaborate collection of smoke and mirrors.