Local power via the Local Power Plan?
This is a good piece from James Meadway summarizing where the English left is in terms of post-Labour organization, and where it might hope to get to at local level over the next year or so in terms of doing to Labour in bigger towns and cities what Reform has just done to Labour in the counties in the recent local elections.
I want to add one key thought on the substance of what a new left coalition-of-sorts might organize around, though first a quick quibble…..
James argues that its “telling” that the drafting in of activists from afar for a byelection is,. However, this is established Labour protocol, and those on the greasy ladder of the Labour system have long known that a photo-op with a minister in return for an hour’s pointless canvassing is important to the CV; it dates from the late and unlamented Progress days at least.
More importantly, James is right to say that the activist bottom has fallen out of Labour. A lot of the capable/willing organizers left in the New Year, in a quiet flood, though some hung on through the locals where they were happening. out of personal loyalty to candidates. They are ripe for picking up because many won’t have a clear organizational direction, but they also fear being: a) scorned for having stuck around so long; b) not being the boss of stuff anymore. But they still have skills to use and even learn from in terms of electioneering, and they need to be welcomed, albeit with due caution against what might be described as the brown bit of red-brown cooperation.
But what a new set of leftish organization people needs more than anything is something substantial it can get its teeth into, and prove it can make happen for working class/’ordinary’ good. In that respect, I’m not as convinced as the Morning Star is by Jamie Driscoll’s ’s razamatazz assembly approach on that, because it feels oh-so-Labour-Labour-leftie-rebranded, and simply not local project focused enough. We need less big speeches about how Labour has let us down, then broad objectives for when power is gained, and more people writing spreadsheets and planning local investment and uptake of good things.
Oddly, I think the most substantial opportunity lies with the Trojan Horse that may be the great Ed Miliband energy/grid project, about which Starmerites are now grumbling mostly because it’s taking a long time to produce results, but perhaps (for the few of them who are more informed) because it opens doors to real local organization results of the type on which they can no longer capitalize, being increasingly out of local government next May, and of local credibility right now.
The whole energy thing is all taking time because Miliband doesn’t want to put the lights out, and because the energy system in complicated legally, financially and big pylon capacity wise, but the GB Energy Local Power Plan (due out very soon to no doubt little fanfare from Labour because it;s big on detail, small on bashing immigrants) is really going to open doors for well-briefed leftists to rush through towards delivery of mixed tenure cooperative schemes that rip a lot of power from energy supply companies, make real differences to households bills, and instill new feelings of local agency and can-do; Miliband is planning to support all this this to a decent extent with development funding.
Whether Miliband gets his way totally on that waits to be seen, as does the nous of the new left activist groups and grouplets, but they won’t in four years time very well be able to say they didn’t have the opportunity to both cut people’s costs and gain local support for being good at this leftist shit.
Local power is where local power may come from, and where it might be built. Time for lefties to get their heads round the detail of how the grid works, and how it can be decentralized, as well as all the low carbon heat stuff that’s now doable at scale.
