Good morning. Over the summer, I interviewed more than 40 people who are trying to influence the new Labour government for the Guardian Long Read, among them thinktank researchers and politicians. The piece, published this morning, tries to work out how radical Andy Burnham intends to be. So far, his big idea is to give more power and money to England’s regions than ever before – and while “devolution” isn’t a word that sets pulses racing, this plan could be genuinely transformative.
Yet, since writing the piece, one thing that has nagged at me is the wider picture. Local media has been gutted. Mechanisms for scrutinising local authority finances have disappeared. Local services and the public realm have been vaporised. Cash-strapped councils have made risky investments and gone bankrupt. All of this amounts to something bigger than a single crisis of accountability; the state’s legitimacy has been eroded, leaving people disenchanted with and distrustful of politics.
