Go Big

People on my side of politics are brilliant at castigating the failures of the market; we are much less good at being candid about the shortcomings of the state. Just as the market can treat people like commodities to be bought and sold, so the state can treat people like cogs in a machine. Don’t get me wrong – the ideas in this book need a strong and effective state, whether to build homes, tend to the sick or support businesses – but we need to ask what kind of state we want. If we preach equality but exclude it when it comes to power and the operation of government, it makes all the other nice-sounding ambitions rather meaningless. If we care about having control over our lives, both when we are served by the institutions of the state and when we work in them, then tackling these issues is fundamental.

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We cannot solve the challenges we now face in the old way – seeing the public services of the state in terms of a one-way mechanism of provision. When Labour was last in government, ministers and advisers were very fond of the term ‘delivery’ – there was even a Prime Minister’s Delivery Unit. Without disparaging the good work done in the unit, there was something problematic about ‘delivery’. It conjures up an image of someone waiting at home for their Amazon package, in other words, waiting for something to be done for them. When it comes to, say, inoculating people against Covid, or providing treatments in the NHS, we definitely need delivery. We need our bins collected. We need the trains to run on time. But beyond those specific services that do indeed require a standard package to be delivered, it’s hard to see any of the really knotty challenges we face being solved without the engagement and involvement of people.

Community wealth building tells us something else about how change happens. If we rely solely on central government to redistribute income and wealth in order to build a fairer economy, we will always be playing catch-up in the fight against inequality – and losing. To begin with, getting money to people through a benefits system that assesses their income will always be more complex than doing so directly through their wage packets. Universal Credit is an extreme example, but it’s true of any system that by definition compensates for the failings of the economy. The scale of intervention needed to achieve a fairer economy is also hard to win political support for, partly because of the power of those who benefit from inequality. And evidence from around the world confirms that it is incredibly difficult to keep inequality from exploding unless you tackle it at source.²⁴ If you start off with a grossly unfair economy and expect redistribution by government to solve the problem, then it’s like running up the down escalator. Community wealth building avoids this by building an economy which is more equal from the start – not just in terms of people’s incomes but also the ownership of businesses and other assets.

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[...] Community wealth building is not a panacea for all our economic and social ills, but does point the way to something bigger. Good jobs at living wages and locally owned businesses are the building blocks of a fairer national, and global, economy. While community wealth building may not fix the larger structural problems of our economy, it offers a way for local leaders to make a meaningful difference to the lives of people and – most importantly of all – in the process sows the seeds of a different way of organising our economy. By thinking about procurement in terms of social value rather than just price, we bring questions of wellbeing into discussions of public policy and undermine the dominance of GDP. Supporting local co-ops, social enterprises and SMEs promotes the concept of worker ownership and the idea that businesses should be rooted in the community, and undermines the assumption that only shareholders matter. Using the public sector to build a fairer economy reinvigorates local democracy and undermines centralisation and disempowerment. Community Wealth Building fosters a new economic mindset.

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Community wealth building shows, once again, that change can start today. Not everyone works for an anchor institution; fewer still determine their procurement or employment policies. Yet many of us have links to them – whether it’s the hospital we work at, the school we send our children to or the council we elect. Government action is of course vital to building a fairer economy, but we can also put pressure on organisations closer to home. As we strive to make the impossible possible and build a new settlement for the country, there is a tendency to dismiss such ideas as either too trivial to make a difference or too utopian to be achievable.³⁷ We have to resist this defeatism. The story of Preston and its bus station teaches us something important. By using the tools at our disposal, by pursuing what is possible, we can not only make an immediate difference to people’s lives but also open a door to the possibility of more radical change.

We must meet the moment by raising the scale of our ambitions for what politics can achieve. There is a new settlement to be built. As we recover from coronavirus, it is the least the British people have a right to expect. We will not achieve this new settlement unless a different guiding spirit animates the way we run our country. As I noted in the introduction, the crises we face have not come about by accident. If we continue to judge our society by the success of those at the top and continue to believe that the market is our master rather than our servant, we will carry on as we are. We need to recognise a different set of values if we are to tackle the challenges we face.

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Let’s not pretend it is easy. It isn’t. It is far lonelier to make the case for things to be different than to argue they should stay the same. Far easier to accept the status quo. As Niccolò Macchiavelli wrote hundreds of years ago, ‘There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order.’