Local Elections 2019: What the most vulnerable need from their councillors

On Thursday, most of the English councils outside of London will hold their local elections. These elections range from a third of seats on the council to whole council elections, meaning a lot of local areas could see control of their councils switch to different parties.

Considering the policies of the governing Conservatives, the austerity they have reigned over that has hurt local areas badly, and the backlash being predicted, the fact that they have the most seats and councils to defend - more than twice second place Labour - could make Thursday a damaging night for them.

That would be good news for the most vulnerable in our society, who desperately need representatives in local government who will push back. And there are some crucial issues that need outspoken councillors.

Just this week came the news that funding to help the homeless has plummeted under the Tories. With resources stretched by the cuts, it's the most vulnerable who lose out. Local government spending on single homelessness fell by £5bn over the last decade, even as rough sleeping rose by well over 100% - with new funding failing even to cover cuts.

That desperate situation for the working age poor is matched by the hit that social care for the elderly has taken under the watch of the Conservatives. Bailing on their centrepiece manifesto reforms, the Tories simply haven't arrested this dangerous situation - and while debate over the way forward continues, the care sector is collapsing.

At the core of the problems facing local communities are the cuts inflicted by the Tories at Westminster. On all of these issues, Westminster government holds decision-making on funding in an iron grip. And, right now under the Tories, that power is being used to choke off redistribution from richer to poorer communities.

The relationship between central government and local government cannot continue to be top down. Westminster needs to be a coordinator, helping local governments work together on mutual projects and for mutual positive outcomes. It seems unlikely that we will get that as long as the Tories and Labour keep their grip on power.

While Labour do at least pursue redistribution, in parts of Britain their local government presence is so powerful that the party is practically indistinguishable from the local administrative structures. One party states are as dangerous as states built on top down authority that divide communities against each other. We need new options. The most vulnerable need new options.

For progressives, the priority for now is ousting the Tories wherever possible. Labour's primary pitch, of introducing the Preston model to other councils is a sound proposition. But the reluctance of the party to accept pluralism means in the long run that party also has to be challenged.

So look closely at your councillor candidates and consider: how they will deal with the issues pressing upon the most vulnerable? Are willing and able to push back against Westminster? Will they open up local government to more voices? And when you've made up you mind, get out their and vote!

Right to Buy is a deeply unequal stopgap, not a solution to the Housing Crisis

Under George Osborne's direction, the Conservative approach to tackling the housing crisis was to resurrect Thatcherism. This came in the form of Right to Buy, the cheap sell off of social housing to first time buyers.

The trouble is, from the start, it was always going to be a time and resource limited solution. Eventually, as always, the Tories would run out of public assets to privatise and the well would run dry.

As New Statesman Political Editor George Eaton put it, "the problem with Thatcherism is that eventually you run out of other people's assets."

Today, the homelessness charity Crisis and the Local Government Association (LGA) were on the same page in calling out the effects of Right to Buy on social housing: the draining of a vital resource that is not being replaced.

Right to Buy, like Thatcherite policies in the 1980s, plugged gaps created by the withdrawal of the state with privatised public assets to buy time for the private sector to get prepared to take over and pick up the slack.

Osborne's policy kept the middle class housing sector afloat at the expense of social housing - even that technically owned by housing association independent from the government - which was sorely needed to provide affordable shelter for the least well off.

Now as then, the results are wildly inconsistent and deeply unequal.

Crisis have put forward a strategy to eliminate poverty in the next decade that puts new social housing - a hundred thousand new homes a year - at the centre. It combines these with a national rollout of Housing First and the strengthening of the rights of renters.

The LGA say that the core of any sustainable social housing plans, like those proposed by Crisis, must by necessity be devolving proper funding to local government so it can get on with the work of building homes.

For progressives, redistributing funds to local government for affordable and social housing is a clear cut issue - especially to poorer areas that see the least benefit from a scheme that doesn't even return the full receipts from the sale of local housing assets. But will Conservatives listen?

Local Elections 2018 Preview: Labour look set for gains, but what we need more is a greater diversity of perspectives

Manchester City Council, with 95 Labour councillors and 1 Liberal Democrat, is a prime example of the need for a greater diversity of unwhipped perspectives in local government. Photograph: Manchester Town Hall by Stephen Douglas (Licence)

After last year's opportunistic election did not go to plan for Theresa May's Conservative and Unionist Party, her government - propped up by the Northern Irish loyalist Democratic Unionist Party - has been stumbling from one potential crisis to another.

These elections come at a strange time. Despite both main parties struggling, they both remain at around 40% in the polls and have a strangling grip on local government. Is this a chance for smaller parties to make some breakthroughs on councils?

With the majoritarian two-party system reasserting itself, some pushback from smaller parties like the Greens or Lib Dems would be welcome, to ensure representation of a wider set of perspectives - and to increase the accountability of local councils.

Conservatives

This will be the Tories first big electoral test since then. The final totals will need to weighed against the fact that half of the seats up for re-election are currently held by Labour. Yet there could be some headline defeats for the government.

Theresa May's party is particularly at risk of losing council seats in London. This includes control of Wandsworth, their flagship council from the time of Margaret Thatcher, which was used as the pioneer for contracting out local services.

The Conservative have taken a low key approach to the local elections. This may be a result of their own strategists projecting heavy losses to Labour. Downing St may have accepted that and prepared to downplay the significance.

This hasn't stopped local Conservative branches from pursuing aggressive campaigning tactics - including repeating the racist and Islamophobic overtones of the Goldsmith campaign for Mayor of London, which targetted Sadiq Khan's ethnicity and religion.

This time around there has been condemnation from Tory voices. But is the Conservative establishment distancing itself simply because of the timing? Local councillors have said their leaflets were signed off by Conservative HQ.

Mired by the Windrush scandal - entirely of their own creation - and with the media pursuing Labour hard over antisemitism, did the Tories just find it an inconvenient moment to be pursuing openly divisive tactics themselves?

Labour

With Labour holding most of the council seats up for grabs this time around, the party has to make inroads in Conservative areas. Part of that has them focussing very heavily on London - perhaps sensing that there are big headlines to be written.

Key Conservative controlled areas could be vulnerable to Labour and sweeping gains - on a night when they will begin already in a dominant position - will be an emphatic statement that can be milked for publicity and be used to continue the narrative of a Labour Party on the ascent.

For the Labour Party leadership, that would be a much need boost as their forward momentum has been arrested - despite the Tories creating problems for themselves - by their inability to adequately address the issue of antisemitism.

The media and critics have run roughshod over Labour on the issue, and Corbyn and his team have not come up with a way to convincingly show that antisemitism will not be tolerated - and thus diffuse the issue. As a result, a cloud hangs over the party.

So too does the ever looming prospect of a split. It's hard to see how anyone on the opposition benches would benefit, in the short term, from an inamicable split - even though a split increasingly seems like a good idea, to end the spiteful internal squabbling.

A split is hindered however, by the archaic quirks of our electoral system, that does not abide multiple parties and the increase in critical perspectives it can bring, nor the prospect of groups working together despite holding different membership cards.

Opposition

The Green Party laid out this, the big theme of the local elections, in the UK in their campaign launch. Co-leader Jon Bartley called for an end to Britain's "one-party state" local councils, to increase their transparency and accountability to local people.

It's an argument that thinktank Compass and it's chair Neal Lawson also press, stressing that Labour need to overcome their obsession with claiming a monopoly on power - which leads it to absorb or crush any possible rivals, rather than working with them.

In terms of the Green Party's own prospects, their best hope may be in trying to make inroads into Labour dominated councils, whose unchallenged authority has resulted in some poor outcomes - that have left some voters disaffected. Consider, for example, the goings-on under Labour at Haringey or Sheffield.

The other visible party of opposition in local government are the Liberal Democrats. Buoyed perhaps by their consistent - as usual - good form in council by-elections, they've been talking up their chances of a mini-revival at the local government level.

With the polls consistently putting the Conservatives and Labour neck and neck, 40% to 40%, it's difficult to see where the Lib Dems will make inroads - especially after several years of desperate defence, to hang on to what they hold.

As supporters of a Progressive Alliance, The Alternative wants the Lib Dems to refind their progressive side. But at present their best chance of picking up seats may be by, finally, convincing Conservative voters that what they liked about the Coalition was actually the Lib Dems all along.

So watch Lib-Con head-to-heads. This is a dynamic that could have a gigantic affect on a future election, where Lib Dems taking votes and seats directly from the Tories could tip Theresa May out of office and open the way for Labour.

Voter ID

These local elections will also be the first to trial the controversial new Voter ID measures that the Conservatives hope to roll out nationally. Such measures have been deeply criticised by electoral and rights groups.

The reality is that, first of all, Britain has very little in the way of electoral fraud, and second, that Voter ID does little to stop voter fraud. In fact, it does little but deter voters - discriminating particularly against the poor.

The trial runs will take place in Swindon, Gosport, Woking, Bromley, and Watford.

Municipalism

If we are to have effective local government there must be no barriers to participation for the community. Their representatives must be accountable and transparent, and able to hold local bodies to those same standards on the public behalf.

Erecting barriers, especially those disproportionately impacting voters from minority groups, and leaving one-party local councils unchallenged, is a recipe for bad governance. Well run, accountable local government can achieve so much at the municipal level.

There are big ideas out there, from Barcelona to Preston. Municipalism taking root. Local government can empower local people. The first step is to break up the local political monopolies, to leave them no choice but to start hearing criticism and engaging with it.

Government turns to finger-pointing as it puts pressure on firms and councils to deliver on it's new homes promises

Photograph: Scaffold Repair Construction from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

It seems that the government has woken up to the need to act on domestic issues. And yet, with the pressure on, the government has decided to start by pointing the finger at others.

Theresa May's ministry, and it's predecessor, have made some major pledges on housing that have not been met. Pledges of several hundreds of thousands of new homes a year that have not been delivered - as admitted by Housing Secretary Sajid Javid last year in a review.

So the government has laid it's plan to tackle this. On Sunday, the Javid issued a warning, via The Sunday Times, that the government would be putting pressure on councils to meet it's targets - prefacing plans to change up it's framework to push even higher targets, set against affordability of local homes.

The aggressive tone was complemented by the threat of stripping from councils decision-making power over what is built in local areas. The threat of intervention is not one that will be taken lightly.

The Prime Minister, today, followed up on Javid's set up to issue a warning to home building firms. She criticised the practice of 'land banking' and announced that firms could be penalised for delays with refusal of planning permission for future projects.

While she acknowledged that young people had a right to be angry - and that, without the 'bank of mum and dad', many would find it impossible to get a foothold on the property - she has answered that anger by shifting the blame to local councils and building firms.

There are real questions about the actual impact of land banking, why firms take so much time to build after planning permission has been received and whether supply is throttled - against which the industry defends itself vigorously.

But even more important are the big questions, that are being ignored, about the government's role in this present crisis. There have been deep cuts to local authority funding. Schemes like help-to-buy have drained social housing stock without adequate restitution or replacement - and driven up prices.

Will pressure on councils and firms to hit higher targets within narrower time frames deliver on policy promises? Or will it just increase the risk of corners being cut?

The Local Government Association (LGA) responded to the government's announcement, and threat of intervention, by saying it was 'misguided' and that the basic block on progress for local authorities was lack of funds with which to build their own homes - for which borrowing powers were needed.

As with Chancellor Philip Hammond's budget, these measures are just tweaks and salves. The Government's blame game isn't addressing the core problems - it's finding scapegoats. That isn't good enough.

There are bigger questions to ask about long term investment, about the role of land and the capture of it's value by a class of rentiers. The government is avoiding these problems in the hope that they'll go away. They won't.

The collapse of Carillion has thrown open the door to Municipalism, but there is work to be done to make it a success

Photograph: Future site of the Library of Birmingham, from 2009, by Elliott Brown (License) (Cropped)

The collapse of government outsourcing giant Carillion has opened a door for critique of how the neoliberal approach to giving out services contracts to the private sector is handled - and mishandled.

With profits subsidised, companies mismanaged to threaten jobs and small businesses, and responsibility for pension funds all too frequently abdicated, that is to be expected.

But beneath and within that critique, is the opening of a much deeper line of thinking. It has opened an avenue for thinking up a new progressive direction - it has become a case study for assembling so far disparate thought and theories.

Voices from all across the progressive wing have been chipping in with pieces of a larger theme that's starting to take shape.

Jeremy Corbyn has followed Carillion - and the defeat of Clare Kober and her Public-Private development scheme - by launch a commitment to the renewal of municipal socialism. He has called for councils to bring services back in house and make regeneration about people first, not speculators.

on Newsnight, economist Mariana Mazzucato argued that Britain's outsourcing partnerships operate in a parasitic ecosystem, where profits are siphoned out of services, but the risk is left with the public. That we need to set out new terms, to define a what a good partnership looks like.

Meanwhile, writing a new column for Open Democracy, journalist Paul Mason began by talking about how neoliberalism had disassembled social mobility along with community. Mason acknowledged that nationalisation can't be done the way it used to be, but that neither can outsourcing. Central government needs to shape models and strategise, rather than dominate.

The example that people keep turning to, for a new model, is Preston. In the past few decades, Preston suffered through, ultimately failing, private-backed regeneration plans. After the failure, the council in Preston responded by doing something incredible.

Preston council tried to use it's own resources, and the funding tools at it's disposal, to stimulate it's own local economy - rather than trusting to more inward private investment and the precarious jobs it brings.

In part courtesy of the efforts of Michael Brown, the council used it's procurement budget to invest in local businesses, it supported local co-ops, and it fought off pop-up high street pay day lenders by backing a credit union.

In the era of government outsourcing giants going under - Carillion, and now Capita the latest to be fighting to not go the same way - rethinking how government budgets are spent, and who they subsidise, is a question that people are finally asking.

So what are these and other thrusts driving at?

Municipalism. A return to communities having an empowered stake in their own local government and local services. Co-operatives, small community-based businesses, community-owned water, energy, homes and rail. Restoring a sense of local purpose that might restore some sense of local hope.

The really interesting thing, though, is what comes next. If efforts to relocalise, to reestablish community, are successful, then influence, money and subsidy are going to be in the power of local municipal politicians. This is so much closer to putting power in people's hands.

But it isn't the end of the battle. Without oversight, without transparency and democratic accountability, local government can be - and at times, is - even harder to keep an eye on and hold to account. If we are going to realise the potential of local government, we need the democracy and oversight to match.

In simple terms, addressing that has two elements: the political and the journalistic.

For the political, reengagement is the first big task. Local election turnout is abysmal. There isn't really any other way to put it. Without people engaging and voting on local matters, there is no more empowerment locally than nationally.

Alongside the collapse in local community life, globalisation has also ushered in the near elimination of local journalism. Local newspapers - like the Coventry Telegraph, that once employed six hundred people - are long gone. The starting point for building oversight will be in finding a way to revitalising the local press.

These are just two starters on a list of issues to tackle. Of which, economically, 'hollowing out' may be among the largest. After decades of sending outside experience, it is no great surprise to find no expertise left inside - or the infrastructure needed to support it.

There is hope in municipalism. A real empowerment to be had. A chance for communities to rebuild, to recover their self-confidence. That has to be worth supporting. To achieve those ends, progressives of all stripes need to throw themselves into preparing the ground.

World on Fire: This week just shows how important empowered local government and international cooperation really are

Ada Colau, the Mayor of Barcelona, and Barcelona En Comu are the most recognisable face of the municipal movement. Photograph: #‎PrimaveraDemocratica‬ amb Pablo Iglesias i Ada Colau by Barcelona En Comú (License) (Cropped)

The last week brought another of those sad and scary moments we're becoming dangerously accustomed to. What 2016 taught us was that we can always find something bad happening somewhere if we have broad enough news coverage.

But in the past week the most powerful man in the world escalated tensions, with a much smaller country, to the brink of a nuclear war. He then failed to identify and condemn fascist terrorism occurring right under his nose, virtually in his own back yard.

These things cannot become a new normal.

We are living in a fragmented and further fragmenting world. The far right are not ascendant, but they are flourishing, and the most powerful man is acting like a lone wolf - in all of the worst possible meanings of that phrase.

These are exactly the reasons why we so need municipalism and internationalism. We need real and empowered local democracy, coupled with a sense of international cooperation, in order to change our perspective - and fight off the dying embers of the nationalist conflagration that so many times has nearly burned our world.

It can be understood why people feel so attached to nations and flags and the pride they inspire, but nationalism has taken us all to some very dark places. And in the present, that means far right terrorism - near indistinguishable, whether Islamist fundamentalism or white supremacist and Christian nationalist - and raised the spectre of a limited exchange nuclear war.

For more than a century and a half, nationalism has been a poison in our veins. Domestically, our lives and the wealth we create is directed away from our wellbeing and progression, into the service of destruction - even while some are left completely without.

Abroad, people - ordinary citizens - are reduced unfairly, unjustly and inaccurately to being colluders in the deadly games of tyrants and terrorists. And it is these people, usually the frontline of victims for these criminals, over whose head the Sword of Damocles dangles. They deserve compassion, but get the point of a spear.

The big challenges of our time - environmental, energy, economic, population - are the problems of the whole world. No zealous corner, putting itself first, can address these issues alone. Cooperation is the best strategy.

But cooperation between who? For more than a century, people have been rendered synonymous with their nations - for better and mostly worse. That has to stop. People need to be empowered in their communities and have a voice through them.

The last few years, the past few weeks in particular, make it hard to believe, but the great trend of history is that things get better. That is the lesson of the work of the late Hans Rosling. And even our empathy too is widening.

There was a slogan in the sixties: "Think globally, act locally". It's never been more relevant. We need to see that our problems don't respect artificial borders. We need to pitch in and make change happen on our own doorstep, in cooperation with our neighbours and neighbouring communities.

We can take back control, but it isn't achieved by falling back into nationalism. It doesn't involve drawing crude borders between territories, drawing crude distinctions between peoples - looking always for difference rather than commonality.

We need to give people real power over their lives. We need to give people consent over their lives and how their communities are shaped. We need to build bridges within communities and between them. And, from the bottom up, reshape our perspective.

Local Elections 2017: Council polls set to be a dry run for the GE2017 campaign

Before it got bumped down the bill by the new main event that is Theresa May's impromptu general election, this year's premier political test in Britain was going to be the local elections. While it might have lost its billing, it hasn't lost it's significance.

In fact, it now carries an expanded added role. Theresa May's U-turn on an early election has created an unusual situation: the 2017 UK general election will get a dry run. The pitches and arguments that the parties are formulating will first be tested on Thursday 4th May.

Unlike in most of Britain's elections, the parties are going to have a chance to put their strategy to the public, assess its impact and then refine it. So don't be surprised to see the parties shift gears heading into June if they feel their pitch struggled in May.

The local elections, covering nearly 5,000 council seats across England, Scotland and Wales, should also give us some idea whether - as we saw in 2016 - Labour can, for the most part, resist a Conservative advance. At the 2016 polls, Labour broke even on councils controlled and limited losses to just 18 councillors, taking 31% of the vote.

However, they also went on to lose a seat at a by-election in Cumbria in the early part of this year, in Copeland - a gift of a victory for a sitting government, the first since 1982, that would normally be faced with just limiting its losses.

With its usually lower turnouts and a slightly different approach, trying to extrapolate trends or sentiments from local elections is difficult and potentially flawed. But there are some races around the country that will be watched intently for any sign of movement.

The particular focus will be on any council under Labour control. They will be under intense scrutiny. The four Labour-controlled councils up for re-election in England in 2017 are Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Durham and Doncaster - and at least three of those have relevance in the June general election as prime Conservative targets.

In Derbyshire: Labour holds North East Derbyshire by just 1800 votes. In the nearby City of Derby, Labour holds Derby South with an 8000 majority - but by only 2500 over the Tories and UKIP combined. In Derby North seat they were narrowly beaten into second in the 2015 general election.

In Nottinghamshire: In the Ashfield constituency, Conservative and UKIP votes add up to over 20,000 with Labour sitting MP elected on less than 20,000, in a seat Labour kept only narrowly from the Lib Dems in 2010. It's a similar story in Bassetlaw, in Gedling and in Mansfield, and Broxtowe was lost narrowly to the Tories in 2010. In the City of Nottingham, the Nottingham South constituency, the total support for the Right is enough to cause concern.

In Doncaster: The Conservatives and UKIP combined to total 18,000 votes in Doncaster Central, a constituency where a Labour MP received just under 20,000 - and in 2010, 15,000 votes between the Tories, UKIP, the BNP and the English Democrats to 16,500 for Labour's MP elect. The neighbouring constituency of Don Valley faces much the same numbers.

In Doncaster it would take a mighty shift to tip the seats away from Labour MPs. But, as with all of the council elections mentioned above, that is exactly what the Tories are counting on. And major losses in council elections will not bode well for Labour's chances come June.

Labour will also have an eye on the elections for the new Metro Mayors, who being given funding powers - though with little democratic oversight, sitting as they will at the head of a council of council leaders. But it presents a chance to fight Conservatives for executive positions that come with funds to distribute locally.

The Liberal Democrats will also be looking to continue their fightback, recovering the ground they lost between 2010 and 2015. They made large gains in 2016 and recovered to 15% of the vote - out performing the polls - and will hope to repeat that performance to gain momentum heading into the June election.

The Lib Dems will also have an eye on the Metro Mayor elections, in particular in the West of England where Stephen Williams, their former Bristol West MP, is running against a Conservative. Winning an election for an executive position, on what used to be their home turf, would be a tremendous boost.

The Green Party will just be looking for a positive performance, after failing to make any headway in 2016 - coming out with 3 seats less.

The local elections in Wales will likely carry a particularly heavy level of media interest, thanks to the BBC focussing on Theresa May's repeated visits to the country and the talk of the opening of opportunities there for the Conservatives. As elsewhere, the question will whether Labour can hold its ground.

In Scotland, there is talk of the Conservatives rallying Unionist support to take seats from the Scottish National Party in June. For both the SNP, with their own aims, and the anti-Tory opposition in England and Wales, it will be of intense interest whether the Conservatives can make any inroads into the astonishingly broad front the SNP have seized in Scotland.

The overall popular vote will also likely be of interest. With only the polls as a guide, some tangible numbers could have a real impact. Now, these should be taken with caution as the majority of councils up for re-election are currently Conservative-controlled - meaning this won't be a simple straight fight. But the plus and minus of council seats, at least, should offer some illumination.

The final factor, but by no means the least, will be the turnout. With a second general election in two years, along with the referendum, falling a month after a large round of local elections, there is reasonable grounds for concern that turnouts will fall drastically.

The big question facing all parties will be: who won't show up? Overall turnout and where and which demographics could have a gigantic affect in June. A lot will depend upon whether disenfranchised voters feel able to turn to the Conservatives (Fearn, 2017) - or whether they simply wash their hands and walk away. If Theresa May is to increase her majority, she needs these people to turn out.

The only effective progressive strategy in June will be vote anti-Tory, whoever and wherever possible uniting behind the strongest candidate. So the local elections will be a chance to express their support for the different Left and Centre options with nuance, before things get an awful lot simpler in June.

Asylum distribution scandal less about immigration and more about inequality

Photograph: The clock tower of Rochdale town hall from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Over the weekend, there were reports of anger at the way those seeking asylum in Britain were being distributed across the country. These people were being sent to the poorest communities, while the richest communities often took not a single person (Lyons & Duncan, 2017).

One town particularly affected was Rochdale, a small town with an outsized history as a progressive beacon. It was the birthplace of the co-operative movement and, against the grain in Britain, supported the Union and the abolition of slavery during the American Civil War (Keegan, 2010; Cash, 2013) - despite the pain of the loss of cotton imports from the Confederacy.

Even in a town with that historical backdrop, there is anger that is framed and understood through the lens of anti-immigration sentiment (Lyons, 2017). But that misses the point, as much of the distracting immigration anger has done so far. The real issue is inequality.

As the figures show, without the funding to match, the burden that comes with caring and including those people seeking asylum is being dropped into the hands of the country's poorest communities (Lyons & Duncan, 2017).

Communities that have already been hit hard by cuts to local government budgets (Butler, 2017) - services have been stretched and funds are scarce. It has been Conservative policy for some time to shift responsibilities away from central government without funding.

All the while, the Right seeks to misdirect the anger at this situation onto 'immigrants' - to those fleeing danger and murder, or the refugees of war. But the figures clearly show the real problem: Britain's wealthiest communities are not pulling their weight or sharing the burdens.

This isn't isolated to asylum. Look at the energy and the environment. Communities, particularly Conservative constituencies, have refused green energy technology, like wind farms, as 'eyesores' blighting their communities (Hennessy, 2012). But where is their outcry against their energy coming from dirty plants in poorer neighbourhoods?

While this unequal distribution of burdens paints Britain in a bad light, . Part of the opposition to the expansion of green energy has been the unequal distribution of its financial benefits (Mason, 2012) and in every community there can be a found positive and charitable support for those seeking asylum from danger.

From Saffiyah Khan, the woman who stood up and peacefully faced a nationalist group when they surrounded a counter-protesting woman (BBC, 2017); to the peaceful and charitable disposition found in communities across the country (Lyons, 2017); there are innumerable examples that Britain has broad shoulders and can make light of its burdens.

But not when all of the burdens are dropped on the poorest communities. Not when the wealthiest communities exempt themselves, sending the unfortunate and desperate somewhere else without even the support funding to match.

It's one rule for conservative Britain and another for everyone else. Like in ancient Athens: "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must". That adage is not good enough and should be left buried in the past where it belongs.

As Theresa May triggers Article 50 this week, progressives must begin forging new path to protect cherished values post-EU

This week will see Theresa May trigger Article 50 and the negotiations will begin to part Britain from the European Union. With this just over the horizon, there was another outpouring of support for the European Union on its 60th anniversary on Saturday (BBC, 2017; BBC, 2017{2}).

Even now the question has been settled by Act of Parliament (Asthana et al, 2017), there remains understandable opposition. Only a third of voters chose to support leaving the EU - contrary to the 52% claims of the 'Brexit Majority', that opponents of Brexit are have apparently had the last word on the matter.

However, while opposition, resistance and mourning will continue, there also needs to be a concerted effort and determined focus on building the new friendships, alliances and institutions that will ensure cherished values in the years to come.

The first frontier for this will be the city. As citizens of neighbourhoods and municipalities there is a whole new path, a local front, on which to work for progressive values to play a vital role in everyday lives.

In the United States, the Republican control of Federal institutions - the Presidency, the Supreme Court and both the Senate and the House in Congresses, however ineffective its leaders may be in using it (Revesz, 2017) - people have found in the city a frontier for effective opposition.

With the Dakota Access Pipeline having been green-lit again, opponents in a number of American cities have sought a new approach. Working with local government, they have sought to take public money out of the hands of the banks and financial institutions that back the pipeline.

The first divestment success has been won in Seattle, where community pressure led to the city announcing it would pull its money from the DAPL backing bank Wells Fargo (Gabriel Ware & Trimarco, 2017). Other cities have sought to follow their example - under the banner of public money being used only with more socially conscious partners (Tobias, 2017).

There is hope to be taken in the contrast that can be seen between the ineffectiveness, U-turns and deadlocks of central governments from the US to the UK and Spain, and the changes, such as divestment, that can be won at the municipal level.

In Barcelona, at the beating heart of the municipalist movement, Ada Colau was elected to the role of Mayor two years ago (Burgen, 2015) and governs the city with the support of just 11 of 41 members of the city council, in the form of the citizen's movement Barcelona En Comu.

And yet. The impact of the movement has been huge, not least in terms of the visibility that its open, engaged and transparent approach. For instance, the city has cut the pay of elected officials and freed up some $200,000 to support a social projects fund (Russell & Reyes, 2017).

Tackling housing issues was at the top of the list of things to address for Colau when she took office, as a former housing activist. The first issue they took on was empty homes. Right from the start, there were fines for holding properties empty in the city for a long period of time (Kassam, 2015).

The first step was to start securing these empty properties for social housing at a social rent - a project that in the first year freed up hundreds of homes (Rodriguez, 2016). It was accompanied by subsidies for those who are falling behind on their rent (Kassam, 2015), as part of the fight against eviction and homelessness.

More fines, and larger, were around the corner for long term abusers who had failed to respond to smaller fines the year before (Badcock, 2016). Yet there is also a carrot to go with the stick, as those willing to make empty properties available for low rents are offered subsidies on renovation and property tax rebates.

The second is tackling the negative impact of tourism in Barcelona, particularly on housing. In particular, AirBnB has been targeted by the city council for working around the city's tourist license approach to curbing the huge number of tourists (The Economist, 2016).

Reestablishing municipal control of important local services has also been a feature of Colau and Barcelona En Comu's time in office. In order to tackle costs, both a municipal funeral company and a municipal water company have been voted through (BComu Global, 2016; BComu Global, 2016{2}).

And Barcelona En Comu has been active on the international stage too. Working with other cities and local governments horizontally (Zechner & Hansen, 2016), they've been at the heart of organising on a range of issues from support for refugees and fighting TTIP.

This is of particular significance to those mourning the impending loss of EU membership. Over the past few years, continent wide city forums have become more prominent. From sharing best practice, to partnering up to take on big challenges together, municipal government is showing just how much of an impact it can have.

There are sparks of municipalism springing up around Britain too. In Preston, in face of the council's funding being cut in half, councillors have been trying to find ways to make the city more self-sufficient (Sheffield, 2017). The start of that has been to redirect procurement through local businesses - doubling its investment in local businesses over three years - to boost the local economy.

And in 2015, Bristol City Council established 'Bristol Energy' as a municipal energy company to fight unfair energy prices (Melville, 2016) - with assistance from the EU's European Local ENergy Assistance (ELENA).

Last year's local council elections showed that in Britain, even under the dark cloud that seems to hover over progressive movements at the moment, winning big elections is still possible on the ground, in local government - even in the days of the "unelectable" Jeremy Corbyn.

Sadiq Khan became Mayor of London, despite the hostile campaign of Zac Goldsmith; and Labour won three other Mayoral elections in Bristol, Liverpool and Salford. Meanwhile the Lib Dems made the most gains of any party.

With more cities getting devolution deals and brand new mayors come the summer, there are not just more chances for progressive parties, but for progressive local action by and for citizens.

In Greater Manchester, the favourite, Labour's Andy Burnham, has already made a number of significant promises that could make a big difference at the municipal level, including longer term security of tenure for renters, longer term security of funding for the community and voluntary sector and paying off student loans for graduates who stay and work in the Greater Manchester NHS (GMCVO Hustings, 2017; Weston, 2017).

But there is more to be done. For instance, an experiment with participatory budgeting in Madrid, were funds were earmarked for local projects decided by online polling, caught some attention in Greater Manchester were the People's Plan was formed, with journalist Paul Mason expressing his support for the idea (Mason, 2016).

What all of this reminds us is that real political and social change starts in your own community, in your own municipality. Whether trying to fix local services or build an international movement, the starting point is your own neighbourhood.

On health, housing, energy - on any of the chief issues - action can be taken at the local level that makes a tangible difference. With Brexit, one path towards cooperation is closing. But others are open and we must turn out attention towards getting the most out of them.

Budget Preview: Will Hammond act to end Conservative pattern of money being redistributed away from most vulnerable?

With the National Debt is still rising, will the Chancellor be able or willing to find some money to invest in essential services? Photograph: Pound Coins from Pixabay (License) (Cropped)

Philip Hammond faces his first budget as Chancellor on Wednesday and he has a lot of pressure to handle. The overall Conservative promise to alleviate the country's debt is still a long way from started and there are spending decisions that Hammond will find it difficult to avoid addressing.

Funding plans for Schools, Social Care and Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) all indicate a troubling pattern of money being redistributed away from the poorest and most vulnerable areas that need it most - not an image that Theresa May, if she is to keep her promise of a Britain that works for everyone, will want to reinforce.

Schools, even those under financial pressure, face up to 3% in budget cuts. Social Care has seen billions cut from the system. And, Theresa May's government is trying to wriggle out of coughing up more money to cover a court-ordered expansion of the PIPs welfare programme.

How the Chancellor addresses these concerns is important. He has already done the press rounds in the past week to assert there will be no big spending and rolled out, the now standard Tory line, that problems are less the result of low funding and more of not following 'best practice' (BBC, 2017). But will that line be maintained through Wednesday?

On Schools, Hammond faces a situation that will be hard to explain away. The government announced plans for a new funding formula in December, that came with the less than reassuring 'assurance' that no school would lose out by more than 3% (Weale, 2016).

That is hardly going to offer succour to schools in poorer areas. As Andy Burnham (Bean, 2017), Labour nominee for Mayor of Greater Manchester, asked the Prime Minister in the Commons: how does the Prime Minister expect to get more working class children to university by cutting schools funding across the North West?

Meanwhile, Social Care has become the particular Tory baggage with which to pummel the government. With £4.6 billion in cuts since 2010 and shortfall predicted (Full Fact, 2016), it is about the hardest area for the government to argue that funding cuts don't make a difference.

In fact, the previous Chancellor George Osborne did begin to respond - but only with an, at best modest, increase in funding, that was planned to come in with this budget, but would only raise around £200 million nationally (Merrick, 2016; BBC, 2016).

The plan also does not actually involve a boost in cash from the government itself, but rather put it onto local councils to raise more in tax - up to 2% extra. However, the one, and particular poignant, flaw in this approach is that wealthier areas will be able to raise more for themselves than the poorest and most vulnerable who need it most.

Across Schools and Social Care, there is a very clear pattern emerging of money being withdrawn from where it is needed most to make tax savings for those from wealthier areas - simply, regressive economics.

That pattern is reinforced in the government's insistence upon not spending the extra £3.7 billion that an expansion of Personal Independence Payments, ordered by the courts, would call for across four years (BBC, 2017{2}) - less than a billion a year to take care of people primarily with mental health problems.

An aide to Theresa May was heavily criticised for his callous remark that funding need to kept to only the "really disabled" (BBC, 2017{3}) - for which he later apologised - but it summed up the Conservative attitude.

Under Conservative government, the services people depend upon in their everyday lives are being squeezed. Money is being siphoned out programmes that serve the most vulnerable and leaving them to find ways to fend for themselves - whether they're young, old or disabled.

There are rumours that the Chancellor will respond with a little more money than is currently planned (Kuenssberg, 2017). However, a lot more investment is needed to convince anyone that the government is moved by a real comprehension of the difficulties people actually face when the public services they rely on are disappearing.

Local Elections: An alternative look Labour's election result, where it leaves them and where progressives go from here

The progressive pitch of the three parties, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green, who may have in places tripped each other more than the Conservatives in the 2015 UK general election.

"It's a disaster", run the stories. The worst performance in half a century (Rawnsley, 2016). A disaster that, conveniently, demands that Labour change direction away from Corbynism and back toward Blairism.

The trouble with that assessment is that the context is all wrong, and so the conclusion that follows is flawed. The reality is that there are few recent historical comparisons that can be made for the present situation.

Up against an almost unbelievable barrage of negative press and critics of every stripe briefing against him, from almost every direction, the results from the local and assembly elections were, all things considered, pretty impressive for Jeremy Corbyn's Labour.

Labour are leading the executive in Wales, London and Bristol - all of which, if publicised well, could be beacons for re-legitimising the idea of Labour in government. The party also topped the national polls on 31%, ahead of the Conservatives on 30% and the Liberal Democrats, recovering to 15%.

Labour in Scotland

The only major 'blemish' in Corbyn's first major election test were the party's struggles in Scotland. But presenting the results in Scotland as part of a 'Corbyn disaster' narrative is misleading.

In Scotland - where Labour have been outflanked on the Left by the SNP, whose blend of Social Democracy and separatism has rendered Labour nearly unnecessary - Corbyn's Left-wing stance is winning, just not really to the benefit of the Labour Party itself.

They have also been outflanked on the Right by the Conservatives, who have unsurprisingly become the banner-bearers for Unionism (it did used to be literally in their name, after all). In fact, Ruth Davidson's Conservatives, who suffer for connections to the Westminster party, are now the Scottish Unionist Party in all but name.

Essentially, the debate in Scotland has moved beyond the traditional UK divisions. For a useful historical comparison you have to reach a long way back, to the separation of British and Irish politics.

The emergence of the Irish Parliamentary Party, out of what had previously been a Liberal Party stronghold, substantially weakened the party in Britain. As it grew, it limited the abililty of the Liberals to win majorities. That led to a period during which Liberals and their Irish allies, and the Conservatives and their Unionist allies, spent two decades trading turns in propped up minority governments.

While in 1906 the Liberals won a landslide majority of nearly 400 seats on nearly 50% of the vote, the emergence of the Labour Party in England squeezed them. The scales tipped decisively when the Liberals became divided, infighting, and protracted war led to a period of National governments that simply coalesced into a new Conservative majority, with Ramsay MacDonald's Labour as a weak and still growing opposition.

Labour has lost its substantial position in Scotland to the SNP, as the Liberals lost theirs in Ireland. But the lesson seems to be that infighting and splits will do far more damage than adapting to the new reality over the border.

Labour in England

The real crux of the Labour-Conservative battle is in England, where Corbyn's party topped the polls. Response to this thin victory, 31% to 30%, hasn't been especially positive. But when it comes to a general election, how do the numbers compare?

In the 2015 UK general election, in England alone, the Conservatives won 41% of the vote to Labour's 32%, for 319 and 206 seats, respectively. In 2010, Conservatives won 40% to Labour's 28%, for 298 and 191 seats. Further back, in 2005 when Labour won an outright UK majority of 403 seats, the Conservatives won 36%, matched by Labour at 36%, for 206 and 278 seats, again respectively.

Corbyn's support in England falls somewhere between the two, between triumph and disaster (Williams, 2016), between a Labour majority and a hung parliament scramble. In 2015, Liberal Democrat support collapsed and both of the two main parties benefited, though the Conservatives more so. However much Labour might have eaten into Conservative support, the Conservatives simply consumed the Lib Dems to keep themselves afloat.

For the Conservatives, everything depends upon their strength in England, particularly in the South. So when a, supposedly, weakly-led Labour wins victories in London, Bristol, and holds Southern councils like Southampton and Hastings, Conservatives should be worried, because when push comes to shove, they have no where else to turn.

It could certainly be said that Tony Blair pressed the Conservatives hardest on this weakness. Blair managed to match the Conservatives for votes in England, while Brown and Miliband did not. And Blair beat them in a general election, while Brown and Miliband did not. However, Blair also had the advantage of facing a weak and disorganised Conservative Party, that Brown and Miliband never did.

In its brightest days, and also the Conservatives darkest, Blair's Labour won 44% of the vote in England to the Conservatives 34%, taking 329 seats to 165 - against weak and disorganised opponents, struggling everywhere except their South and East heartland, and versus weak third party opposition.

Labour's 400+ seat majority under Blair included some 80 seats in Scotland and Wales. A boundary review in Scotland reduced the number of seats, mostly Labour, in Scotland by thirteen. Heading into 2005, the heights of 419 and 413 seats were reduced to 403. 56 seats in Scotland was now approximately 46. And in Wales, where Labour won 34 seats in 1997, support has reduced over time to 30, to 26, to 25.

For all praise for his achievement of eating into Conservative support in England, by even 2005, if Blair's Labour had not been able to rely on Scotland, its majority would have evaporated. The party, even under Blair, would have been reduced to 315 seats - even including 30 seats in Wales - and the party would have had to turn to around 50 Lib Dems in order to govern.

For two elections, 1997 and 2001, Labour were able to win majorities in England, but they almost immediately fell back into large minorities of support as their primary opponents recovered and stronger third parties began to challenge. Labour's brief four years of winning majorities in England came against weak opponents in London, the West and East Midlands, in the North, Yorkshire and Humberside, and by encroaching on the Conservative heartlands where they could.

And in that fact, the Conservatives can usually take comfort in Labour's own weakness in England by comparison. Numbers past past and present make clear that there is a well of potential Conservative support in England, in most parts of the country, that can put the party over the top - even in supposed Labour territory.

Almost decisive since 1997 has been the Conservatives incursion into Labour territory. Between 1997 and 2010 there have been 15 seats in the North West, 10 in Yorkshire, 20 in London, 15 seats and 20 seats in the East and West Midlands respectively which saw a complete reversal of positions - 80 of the 329 won in England in 1997.

Before talking of taking seats from the Conservatives in the South East, in a New Labour master stroke, figuring out how Labour might win its own backyard seems like more of a priority. Ed Miliband won maybe 10 of these seats in 2015, only to lose several others from the same regions back to the Conservatives - with numbers propped up by the Lib Dem collapse.

Reality Check

Harold Wilson, at his peak, only won 285 seats in England to 216 for the Conservatives. Without Scotland, even the headline victory of Wilson's Labour would have been reduced to a majority of just 2 seats. Against the historical background, Blair's approximate, and astonishing, 140 gains in England in 1997 - lifting Labour from around 190 to 330 - looks more the result of extraordinary circumstances than the profits of a particular campaign.

Labour's support has, since it broke out from being the trade unionist representative ally of the Liberals, always been a coalition of fellow travellers - from moderate reformers who might have been liberals in other times, through trade unionists and the industrial working classes the party claimed to represent. In 1997, Blair tried to expand that alliance into the affluent South and East with a pitch to swing voters that did not produce lasting gains and alienated the party's core in the process (Mason, 2015; Mason 2016).

At the moment, Corbyn is maybe only on par with Brown or Miliband in terms of support across England and seems intent on making gains back mainly in areas Labour has lost ground. Without some new political earthquake discrediting the Conservative Party and creating an opportunity to delve into the South East and pitch social justice - smotheringly Conservative in its representation as the South East is, with the second place party now usually UKIP, who are even more conservative -  the best case scenario for the Labour Party in England would seem to be 250 to 280 seats, supported by maybe 25 in Wales.

With a Britain-wide best case for Labour, for now, of 275 to 305 seats - short of finding a way of forcing Britain's provinces to readopt the old two-party politics - the Left, and Labour in particular, has to start taking the prospect of electoral alliances seriously. Even a convenient Blairite rebrand isn't likely to break through the Southern attachment to conservatism without losing ground of its own elsewhere.

There are, however, more than 30 seats - largely in the South - where the Liberal Democrats remain the main opposition to the Conservatives. And the Green Party took 4 second places and around 20 third places in 2015. And in these and many other places, the parties will have tripped each other up to the benefit of the Conservatives.

Where Labour has less chance of winning, they should be actively interested in ensuring that the Conservatives have a difficult time of it too. This means accepting that Green environmentalism and Lib Dem civil liberties pitches will cut deeper amongst some current Conservative voters than what Labour might pitch - all the while building the possibility of forming a working, progressive government later.

Despite the barrage of negative press, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour has shown it can win and has secured control of executive positions that will legitimise it as a party of government. But when 2020 rolls around, for reasons far beyond Corbyn's fault or control, that may not be enough. If an alliance with the SNP remains taboo in England, a progressive majority might still be possible without them. But it will probably require progressives of different stripes working together to get there.

Local Elections: Conservatism is far from dominant in a divided Britain, but people still await an alternative

Yesterday saw local council elections across England and assembly elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, that emphasised how varied the politics of Britain's provinces is becoming.

With so many pressures, on so many parties, from so many directions, the local and assembly elections were always going to be a fraught and complicated affair. As it happens, the changes forced were in small increments and, in broad context, left matters largely as they were (Kuenssberg, 2016).

But the biggest story of the night is really the way in which politics has taken on different shapes in different parts of Britain. In its different provinces, politics is being reshaped to fit provincial rather than British themes (Mason, 2016; Mason, 2015). Old divisions are being broken down, new ones are springing up and some groups are adapting while others are not.

The broad picture showed the Labour Party largely hanging on, with inconvenient losses matched by surprising gains and holds. However Corbyn still finds himself wrestling with the internal contradictions left to him by previous leaders, who failed to solve the fundamental disconnect between the party and its supporters. The Conservatives too managed to broadly hang on and even made the publicity friendly gain of becoming the official opposition to the SNP in the Scottish Parliament.

The Liberal Democrat slump also seemed to have hit bottom, with the party's vote mostly stabilising at about 8%. Yet there were also signs of life, with some gains won on the back of astounding swings of around 10-15% - an increase in supporters in the thousands - that will provide some useful fuel for their #LibDemFightback narrative.

UKIP's night was largely devoted to establishing themselves, securing their bridgeheads rather than breaking new ground. Their results matched 2015 and followed suit by again paying off in second places, and this time with both council seats and seats in Wales' Senedd.

Yet this broad, federal, party picture hides a much more complicated set of movements beneath the surface.

The results in Scotland redrew political lines to reflect the new reality of debate in the country. The SNP, now without a majority but still in position for a strong minority government, have set out Scottish separatism as the movement with the momentum. The Conservatives are the opposition, and Unionism is their opposing force.

In that debate, other issues are being sidelined and with them the other parties. Labour, who are really struggling to distinguish themselves in the separatism-unionism debate, look the most lost. The social democratic Centre-Left have seemingly rallied around the SNP, while the those following the Unionist cause have unsurprisingly gathered about the Conservatives. The principled opposition to the SNP approach to governing, on issues of civil liberties and the environment, has gathered around the Greens and the Lib Dems. That doesn't leave much room for the Labour Party.

The Liberal Democrats night in Scotland lays out their own particularly strange journey. While across Scotland their support seemed to settle to the national average of around 8%, in particular constituencies they won huge victories, even against the SNP, with 15% wings bringing thousands of voters. That was enough to give Will Rennie a constituency seat with a 3500 vote majority in North East Fife, along with gaining Edinburgh Western.

By contrast with Scotland, the election in Wales almost felt like a delayed continuation from the 2015 general election. The Lib Dem vote levelled out at around the 8% margin seen elsewhere, and in Wales, last year, but in this situation that meant Lib Dem seat losses suited to the 2015 slaughter. And yet, party leader Kirsty Williams won her constituency with a 10% swing to increase her majority by thousands of votes.

Meanwhile UKIP gained representation in Wales through the regional list vote, taking seats at the expense of the Conservatives and the Lib Dems, thanks to 13% of the vote gained mostly at the expense of Labour. That number reflected their Britain-wide 2015 performance, and seemed to confirm the Senedd election as almost a rebalancing - representation adjusting to match their performance.

In the local council elections in England, Labour lost seats but - again - largely held their ground. The Lib Dems showed more surprising resilience, taking a projected 15% of the national vote share and even an overall gain of more than forty council seats and control of a council. As in Wales, UKIP appear to be rebalancing, losing votes but claiming some council seats, in seeming redress from a year ago. The Conservatives lost almost fifty seats and control of a council, but for a sitting government the results are as undramatic as could be hoped.

That stands in contrast to London. After eight years of Boris Johnson, with Labour struggling, the Conservatives must have thought that this was a clear cut opportunity. Yet it was Sadiq Khan's campaign that has had all the momentum, despite the dirty tricks and negative campaigning of the Conservatives - run not only by Khan's opponent Zac Goldsmith, but endorsed from on high by Conservative leadership (Hattenstone, 2016).

As the dust settled, Sadiq Khan had become the new Mayor of London and Labour hold a commanding position in the London Assembly. Presented as the candidate representing a diverse and inclusive London, his election confirms the stark contrast between the politics of London and the Conservative majority in Southern England won in May 2015.

The sum of these results is to say that Conservatism is far from dominant in the UK because Britain is, beyond the simplistic divisions of Westminster majorities, composed of a number of different provinces over which Conservatives do not hold sway. London is a progressive beacon in the conservative South. Scotland is dominated by a fundamental question of its identity, while Wales seems to be struggling to find its own in a post-industrial world. Across the North, Labour's former heartlands, that post-industrial world has left Labour increasingly locked in a struggle with UKIP for its soul.

The results show conservatism to be an ideology ruling others from outside, at arms reach. But they also suggest that people are still waiting for a real and clear alternative to be put forward - and for someone to stand behind it. At the moment, progressives do not have a clear alternative pitch to offer and they are too divided into factions, and parties seemingly incapable of cooperating.

There are sparks here and there that show a pitch might be formulated in time for the 2020 general election. Support for Proportional representation is widening. There is growing acknowledgement of the need to tackle the housing crisis, including the rental sector. Welfare, inequality, austerity, basic income - these are all showing up on the public radar.

The future of these ideas, of turning them into policies, will require progressives to recognise the necessity for an alliance backing a clear positive alternative. An alliance internally within Labour, an alliance between Labour and other parties, an alliance between different parties in different provinces. Britain is divided, but progressives can do what conservatives can't and unite it behind a common cause.

Local Elections: What can local government do about the housing crisis?

Government's 'Right-to-Buy' policy is a parasite feeding itself on social housing stock, another drain on the scarce resources at the disposal of local government to protect the public welfare of their communities.

Few things symbolise the UK's problems like the housing crisis. The escalating price of housing has plagued Britain for more than a decade, and has roots even deeper than the housing bubble that contributed to the 2008 Financial Crisis.

Beveridge, who had answers for so many other issues of social welfare, struggled to address the complications and implications of the housing sector (Birch, 2012). The housing benefit bill, his stop solution gap, has only escalated.

The housing crisis will be a key issue in this week's local and assembly elections. Studies released suggest confusion over the nature of the crisis, with a misplaced belief that immigrants are somehow responsible for the housing shortages and rising prices (Tigar, 2016) - rather than the more complicated reality behind the broader issue of cost living.

But there are fewer doubts about the impact of the crisis. The overwhelming majority, in a society that places emphasis on home ownership, have been disenfranchised (Helm & Doward, 2016), being effectively priced out of ever taking part. More division and social strife are not going to solve that problem.

The housing crisis, beneath the murky layer of divisive negative politics (Oborne, 2016), has dominated the London Assembly debate. As expected, that has led to candidates making grand promises and trying to find ways to work around Westminster-imposed austerity.

For instance Caroline Pidgeon, the Liberal Democrat candidate for Mayor of London, has proposed using the Olympic levy to fund the building of 50,000 homes under direct Mayor's office supervision (Hill, 2016) - to be council houses kept safe from the government's social housing draining Rent-to-Buy policy.

A similar pattern has emerged in Scotland. Devolved control over taxation is being taken as an opportunity to differentiate the country from Westminster government policy.

The opposition Labour and Lib Dems have both proposed to use new tax powers to raise tax, by a penny in the pound, to increase education funding - in stark differentiation from the cuts policy of the Westminster government. This follows into housing.

The Liberal Democrats have pledged 50,000 new homes for Scotland, with four fifths being for social rent (BBC, 2016), while Labour have pledged 60,000, with three quarters to be rented out by councils, housing associations and co-operatives (BBC, 2016{2}).

Increasing social housing stock is definitely a good idea, not least for the social security it offers. It is also one of the few ways that has been shown to help in keeping the housing benefit budget under some semblance of control (Johnson, 2015).

So far government aims to encourage home building has stalled in private hands, regardless of policy (Wright, 2016). So the question remains if these devolved institutions will have more luck than Westminster in getting developers to, effectively, act against their own interests and increase the housing supply.

That is a particularly tough ask when councils have been dealt an even shorter leash than other devolved bodies. While some powers have been handed over for various areas, the capacity to fund them has been decreased and the level to which democratic authority extends is being curtailed.

From alterations to local business rates or the administration of schools being made centrally at Westminster and imposed on local bodies (Butler, 2016; Cook, 2016), to responsibility for social care being added to the jobs of protecting front line services even as council funding is being dramatically slashed (Wintour, 2016; Oliver, 2015), local bodies are being handed new responsibilities and poor funding hand in hand.

In the face of these restrictions, how much can councils really do to help ease the housing crisis?

Well, elsewhere in Europe, municipal governments are getting organised - building horizontal alliances with other councils, pooling funds and looking for innovative solutions during times that have imposed thrift on an entire continent (Zechner & Hansen, 2016).

In Spain, Barcelona En Comu have been leading a municipalism movement that has seen it working with local citizens and other cities to overcome the hindrance of austerity. The movement, of whom Mayor Ada Colau is a member, has found innovative and resourceful solutions to increase social housing availability in the city (Rodriguez, 2016).

Westminster's support for local government has been sporadic and erratic (Wainright, 2016). To fill the gaps left in budgets, local government has to look to build new kinds of partnerships. And a spirit of cooperation will have to be a part of that.

Regardless of who wins where, all councillors and assembly members will have to be willing to work across party boundaries, and even across local government boundaries. To overcome the challenges ahead, local government needs elected figures with constructive voices who are prepared to cooperate and build alliances across the usual borderlines and divisions, in order to protect vital services and the welfare of their communities.