-
Yeah this is the exciting stuff that Labour seem to be on the right track with alongside devolution. Although I’m not as optimistic as your mate about it leading to a forest of nationally-owned wind farms, or, say, a Leeds metro, because they would need significant public funding. There’s the national wealth fund, but it’s pretty small at £7.3bn.
If they’re heavily leaning into planning reform to create growth without public funding, and it seems like they are, it really isn’t the magic bullet they think it is. It won’t solve the housing crisis for instance, because it’s largely a crisis of distribution and overly-financialised asset ownership. Labour have tried their best to avoid issues like this because they require pre- and re-distributive fixes alongside structural macroeconomic changes.
The best case for me is that the empowered councils and regions start following something like the Preston model, and bolster local economies with insourcing, prioritising co-operatives, regional banks, stuff like that. Quite small fry, but good nonetheless.
You are reading a single comment by @jb000 and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
slippers
@jb000
Some insight from my policy wonk mate. On one level looking hard for the positives but elements i hadnt considered:
"The labour manifesto is a document that is deeply uninspiring on one level, but underneath, does have a strong analytical edge on the structures that underpin the political economy of the country as it really functions. Killing off competitive budding for councils, allowing for multi year settlements, and bringing in more integrated settlements for combined mayoral regions sounds really fucking boring, but it is how you are going to transform public services and decision making at the local level.
So if the industrial strategy they're quietly posing is about a radical transfer of power to the regions through the mayoralties (newly empowered through reshaped planning regulations), then I guess that's where the bet on growth is coming from. The Tories can't touch the planning stuff because their political base is basically the green belt. So I suppose Starmer has made the calculation that he'd rather expend his political capital on ramming through planning reforms than the EU. Put another way, there's going to be an absolute forest of nationally owned onshore wind farms by 2029."