In a local shop last week, I bumped into a woman I hadn’t seen for many years. She has children now, a boy and a girl, both of them entering adulthood. Her daughter is studying government and politics. “Brilliant,” I said. She made a face. I asked her why. “They’re all corrupt,” she replied. I cannot stop being dismayed.
Next week, Americans could elect a lying, raping, cheating, sneering, criminal, authoritarian narcissist to be their President. He continues to refuse to accept that he was defeated at the previous election, when he urged supporters to engage in insurrection. He claims that everyone in power is corrupt except him, and that if he triumphs there will be a mighty cleansing. He boasts that this will restore to a America a state of greatness that has been been taken from its people by an “enemy from within”. Millions of those people believe him. It is terrifying.
In Britain, we are better off. In July, our voters threw out a Conservative Party that had flattered to deceive, been led by loafers, cranks and chancers, and grown increasingly more devoted to clinging on to power than to serving the country. Its desperation took the form of pandering to the same type of nationalist delusions the would-be saviour of America trades in. A fat lot of good it did them. But they haven’t given up on the snake oil. Their next leader will be from the extreme right of their party. It will be flag-waving, fibbing and scapegoating business as usual.
The task of the new Labour national government is to convince Britain’s people that purposeful, practical left-of-centre politics can produce improvements in the lives of the great majority, unify rather than divide, and restore belief in the honesty and efficacy of democracy. Its first few months have been bumpy, and not solely because too many political journalists are more interested in rows, non-scandals and gossip than in policy. But Wednesday’s budget is a precious opportunity to set a course for national renewal that will expose the alternatives for the populist frauds they are.
London is absolutely key to that renewal, not only as a huge economic engine but also as a model for what a big city society of possibility and opportunity can be. A while back I warned that the capital could not expect Sir Keir Starmer as Prime Minister to be much of friend. This followed his big flap about Labour’s narrow failure to win the Uxbridge & South Ruislip by-election – subsequently gained at the general election – following a typically dishonest Tory campaign. But while Sadiq Khan will not expect to get everything he wants from a government of the same political shade as his, I’m hoping I was too gloomy.
Starmer has promised an end to London-bashing and appeared at Khan’s mayoral election campaign launch. He has vowed to work collaboratively with England’s Mayors, including the sole Tory in such a position and London’s. Pre-budget reports say that Chancellor Rachel Reeves will give them more freedom to raise and spend money, and longer-term financial settlements – something London has been crying out for.
A commitment to funding the HS2 link to Euston looks on the cards. It has been confirmed that Angela Rayner has secured an extra wedge for affordable housing alongside changes to the Right to Buy and a five-year social rent settlement. Her backing for Oxford Street’s pedestrianisation shows a grasp of central London’s importance to national growth.
All of this is good and would never have happened under the Tories. But how good will it turn out to be? Worries remain that the old centralising urge remains strong within Whitehall, including at the all-important Treasury. How much extra freedom will Mayor Khan and his counterparts enjoy?
The HS2 link is one thing, yet the future of Euston station is, as Charles Wright has shown, still uncertain. Sir Mark Rowley has said the Metropolitan Police budget is “heading off a cliff“. Rayner’s additional funding for homes is welcome but, as housing associations, charities and, today, the Centre for London have pointed out, hardly huge and we don’t know how much of it will come to London, where the housing conditions of far too many are dire.
Then there is the plight of local government, from which London is far from exempt. All over the city, Town Halls are reporting financial black holes. London Councils last week released its latest devastating report on homelessness in the capital and the enormous cost of temporary accommodation that falls on boroughs already struggling to make ends meet.
Never as politically urgent as health or education, local government has been at the end of the national government spending queue throughout the gruelling years of austerity. In the capital, some councillors have committed the basic error of doing a good job of making the best of things – an error because, as a wise friend likes to say, when it comes to getting more public money, nothing succeeds quite like failure.
Here I return to my chance meeting in the shop. People moan about their councils, but also feel they know and can approach them. They are their closest point of contact with political power and decision-making. Their councillors are often the elected representatives they turn to first for help.
A complacent or malfunctioning local authority can confirm the dispiriting cynicism citizens feel about government at higher levels, helping to open their own back doors to the most dangerous, destructive or just incompetent political forces. Remember what happened in Barking & Dagenham in 2006, when the British National Party won 12 seats. But an engaged, energetic and responsive one can be an antidote to that, and a neighbourhood bridge to national initiatives having good effects on the ground.
Local government might not be the top priority of PM Starmer or Chancellor Reeves, but they and their colleagues would be unwise to take it for granted – as Rayner, and indeed the Mayor might be accused of doing to Labour colleagues on Westminster Council before making their Oxford Street announcement.
The budget needs to be a very large positive step towards not only national economic and social renewal but also a restoration of national belief in the good faith of politicians and the value of democracy. It needs to make a start on persuading that woman I met in the shop to be pleased about what her daughter is studying.
Dave Hill is the published and editor of OnLondon.co.uk. Support this unique website and its freelancers for just £5 a month or £50 a year and get things for your money that other people don’t. Details HERE.