August newsletter note
Author: Liam Booth-Smith |
This note from the Chief Executive is from our August newsletter. You can read the newsletter in full here and register to receive it straight to your inbox on our homepage.
As I write this note, I glance at the cover of a magazine on my table. It is lit up with the words “DON’T PANIC”. The subtitle promises “an optimist’s guide to Brexit”. (Old copy of the Speccy as it happens.) I decide instantly that I must not, under any circumstances, write about Brexit. This is the only time I’ll mention it, I promise.
I scribble a working headline on the pad next to my laptop, ‘We can be optimistic about devolution’. I can’t decide whether I’m being ironic or earnest. I plump for earnest. There is, of course, plenty to be positive about. The ever excellent Greg Clark is now in charge of an economic ‘super department’, and Sajid Javid has been consistently thoughtful and effective in two previous cabinet positions. I’m looking forward to seeing how they work together.
Last week was actually my first as Chief Executive, I’ve taken over from Alex Thomson, who did a sterling job. It’s worth me making clear Localis will keep banging the drum on devolution, but I’m as interested in sharing ideas on how our society and other public services need to change as I am about the future of local government – for example I’ve written for Prospect Magazine on what devolution should mean for the NHS here.
It’s been a huge year for politics and I’ve been reflecting on what that means. The last ‘big’ year was 2010; 13 years of Labour rule ending, coalition, the Rose Garden love in, Steve Hilton’s shoeless radicalism. Schumpeter was really doing the rounds on conference power points too. It felt like all of our public services needed to be broken down and remade from scratch.
After this summer, a new government, and all of the analysis that followed about a nation divided and impending economic disaster; you’d think the feeling would be similar to 2010, but it isn’t. It’s far more prosaic. There’s still a sense that we need something radical, but perhaps not ideologically destructive. Currently this is a lesson the Conservatives are trying to remember, and one Labour is trying to learn.
I thought I’d close with a bit of business, the next major Localis report is out in September and will be exploring how we can build more homes. I’ve tentatively been pitching it as ‘how we can turn generation rent into the next big wave of homeowners’. As they say, watch this space.