Labour needs to harness the energy in communities, not resuscitate stale structures

Labour’s 2024 election campaign is not remembered for its vitality. Yet there was a diamond in the rough that is worth turning back to a year later. In front of an audience in Grimsby, Keir Starmer said, “I don’t want someone standing in Whitehall and Westminster looking at a map and deciding what they think is best for Grimsby, because I think that people with skin in the game are the people who make the best decisions.”

It was, and is, the right message for a political moment defined by a desire for control in people’s lives and a deep distrust of politics and government. The British Social Attitudes Survey 2025 shows that we are still in that political moment; the 2024 election has not thus far restored trust and confidence.

Some on the centre-left approach the political moment differently. They see delivery – that is, getting Whitehall working and achieving policy change – as the primary route to restoring trust and, in turn, securing electoral success. We could call these the ‘deliverers’. Another group – let’s call them the ‘devolutionaries’ – recognise delivery is important, but also think distrust in government and the lack of control people feel need to be address. This group – which includes organisations such as the Co-operative Party – is pushing the government to make sure power is moved as close to ordinary people as possible, for example through the English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill.

The We’re Right Here campaign – which both of us work on – shares this commitment. However, there is a worrying strand of thought on parts of the ‘devolutionary’ centre-left that risks inadvertently tying progressive politics to existing institutions – just as trust in those institutions has evaporated. The risk is of trying to address raw and emotional desires for control with a dry and procedural response.

A case in point is the different approaches being advocated to neighbourhood governance. Crucially, neighbourhood governance is the lowest level of formal power, and the closest it gets to normal people – and thus the level you want to reach if you’re serious about taking back control. With an imminent local government reorganisation set to move power further away from the ground, through scrapping district councils and forming unitary authorities, finding a good answer to the neighbourhood governance question has become especially pressing.

Prescriptions that have emerged over the past year or so tend to propose traditional (parish councils) or quasi-traditional (neighbourhood councils) responses. Whilst all serious consideration of how to move power closer to ordinary people is welcome, such approaches are unfortunately out of step with the forward-thinking changes being made throughout government – such as the Test, Learn, and Grow programme – that prioritise working with community organisations in new and refreshing ways.

Specifically, old-fashioned approaches to devolution fail to seize on the political and social energy that exists in communities, instead pursuing traditional, narrow electoral structures in a country that has fallen out of love with – and in many cases is divorced from – them. Such approaches fail to give an equal voice to all local people, instead introducing structures that concentrate power in few hands, on low turnout and with limited accountability, and opt for a geography that often bears little relationship to what ordinary people understand to be their local area. Ultimately, they won’t close the gap between politics and the public, especially those parts of the public that are the most disaffected.

A new approach is needed that meets the public where they are by putting power where trust is highest: in community organisations and groups. The majority of places that are most disaffected with politics do not have a tradition of electing community councils, but are disproportionately likely to be home to community organisations through which people organise and band together to improve their lives for themselves. These community organisations are trusted in a way local government structures are not, and can reach people the state does not. It is these organisations and their energy that government should be looking to harness, just as the Co-operative Party’s Community Britain campaign does.   

A better way forward for the 2020s would therefore be for Labour to create space for formal power-sharing agreements between councils and local communities – agreements that would give people the opportunity to directly shape what happens in their neighbourhoods. The We’re Right Here campaign has described these as “community covenants”, since they ought to be about building genuine relationships rather than re-enacting the classic transactional approach to social and political change. These should be shaped by the realities of each individual area, and give communities a permanent seat at the table.

The mooted requirement for councils in England to introduce a “consistent layer of community decision-making” is an opportunity to put this idea into practice. Rather than dry proceduralism, “community covenants” offer a flexible way to harness the political energy that actually exists in local places – particularly the most disaffected ones – and to close the gap between politics and ordinary people.

The current political moment requires fresh thinking. Rather than attempting to breathe life into existing structures, we should be taking advantage of the energy that already exists on the ground. It is time for the ‘devolutionaries’ to up their ambition, and to pursue community politics for real.

Josh Westerling is Policy Manager at Power to Change and advises the We’re Right Here campaign on its political strategy.

Rich Bell is Director of We’re Right Here