After the Scottish referendum, Labour must now set out its vision for England, writes Jamie Reed

During the recent debate surrounding the future of the United Kingdom, the separatists’ ugly and deliberate conflation of England with Toryism represented a calculated insult. England: the country of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, Clement Attlee, George Orwell, William Morris, William Blake and countless other figures whose lives shaped leftwing thought not just throughout Britain but the world.

The insinuation beneath the lie was that the English are content with London’s dominance of the national economy and with how Westminster functions. Nothing could be further from the truth. In cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle and Leeds dissatisfaction with how London runs the show and how Westminster functions is about to erupt. They are dissatisfied in Bristol, too. And Exeter. And Norfolk. And right across the Midlands.

England is a country of real contrasts, containing millions of working people who want and need progressive government. England’s progressive tradition is woven into our national self-consciousness. At times this consciousness can be latent, but it has never disappeared. Following Scotland’s independence referendum, Labour now has an opportunity not seen since the dying days of John Major’s government to stir England’s progressive soul and speak to the people of our country in a way it has not done since the mid-1990s.

Critically, Labour must facilitate the ambitions of the English regions. A new constitutional settlement for Scotland compels a new constitutional settlement for the other nations of the UK. Difficult? Yes. Inescapable, too, but, more than anything else, long overdue.

Regional devolution is a necessity, but is only the beginning England requires. Beyond our great cities, the nation-building England needs will be much more difficult. It is in the peripheral areas outside of our major conurbations all over England where the next Labour government must concentrate its efforts.

England is beset by a toxic disconnection between the governed and those who govern them. Nowhere is this disconnection more keenly felt than in that forgotten England largely ignored by the political mainstream and the national media; those places people have heard of, but have never been to. In our Rugby League towns, in our lower-league football cities, a crisis is taking grip that only a progressive government can solve. Right now, Britain’s peripheral economies are experiencing a collapse in their reserves of ‘social capital’.

This can be defined as those people with ‘talent’: literate, numerate, ambitious, financially adept and engaged with civic society. Successful regional economies are built upon this class – they oxygenate local economies, they act as the arteries of local and regional civic life – but, not just this, but in healthcare, local government and commerce too. In short, Labour’s task will be to create a vibrant, thriving, mercantile class. Whatever public investments these areas might receive, without the software of social capital, new hardware will be pointless.

In many places – driven by austerity – the community fabric is being destroyed and the very pillars of local society and community are disappearing.

Communities like this are now used to dealing with the consequences of factory closures – but a new challenge is on the horizon. What happens to these communities when government pulls out? Austerity is not just crucifying the public and private sectors in these areas, but it is causing the social capital to flee.

We can see the effects and the indicators of diminished reserves of social capital right across the public and private sector. Take the review of underperforming English hospitals by Bruce Keogh. These trusts share some key characteristics – they struggle to recruit medical professionals – but scratch beneath the surface of the communities they serve and you will find similar demographics, similar issues of poverty, but also poor local authorities, struggling schools, derelict high streets. So even when the state acts as a guarantor whereby peripheral economies should theoretically receive the same standards of, and access to, healthcare as the most prosperous parts of the country, the diminishing social capital in these areas begins to affect universal services provided from the centre so as to make them suboptimal.

So as the role, nature and size of the state continues to change, the need for replenished stocks of social capital becomes imperative in our peripheral local economies.

In prosperous areas, the state can retreat and social capital will fill the void created. The reason there are few free schools in disadvantaged areas is because there is little social capital capable or ambitious enough to want to run a school. When the state retreats in peripheral economies where there is little or no social capital to speak of, the void will not be filled. A Labour agenda for a leaner, more flexible and responsive state can only be delivered if social capital is first grown and invested in.

The key to doing this is to devolve power. This will result in faster, more effective delivery of better healthcare, better educational outcomes, better communities and stronger local economies. The devolution of power to Britain’s peripheral economies is the essential foundation stone of any meaningful effort to fundamentally address the causes of poverty in these areas. Consideration should be given to town and city charters whereby a reliable relationship between the centre and the periphery can be established and the obligations of the state nailed down. Regional pay policy for key public services should be considered, whereby the highest-achieving, most effective public servants are financially rewarded for choosing to work in struggling areas: a ‘tour of duty’ approach to social capital growth. Local business growth should be prioritised with the establishment of favourable lending arrangements with the banks. The growth of social capital in these areas can be achieved, and once this growth takes root, genuine transformation, socially and economically, is possible – becoming indigenous, independent from the centre, self-sustaining and the critical enabler of a smaller, smarter state.

Central to Labour achieving any of this is an understanding of how England currently is and not how we would want it to be. Some hard questions must be asked and these require detailed answers. English devolution must never fall victim to the same pitfalls of Scottish nationalism; in particular the self-delusional refusal to ask and answer the tough questions. This means tackling the deep conservatism that exists in some ‘solid’ Labour areas. For local and regional economic growth to take off, attitudes of grievance and dependency need to be challenged. In Labour’s heartlands, even given the disproportionately levied misery of austerity, the party must seek to lead these regions with a vision based upon new ambitions, not by wallowing in historic industrial decline and injustice. Such an approach would place Labour firmly in the business of developing and implementing solutions: politics as project management. The project? The creation of a wealthy nation, comprising wealthy regions with equal opportunity for all.

In the process of achieving this, we must always remember that individual ambition is so often the engine that drives social progress. Popular leftwing policies, wealth redistribution, progress in itself all depend upon individual ambitions coming together to share a common agenda. Regional devolution, but in particular its ability to spur economic growth, is a powerful mechanism for empowering individuals and communities.

Empowerment, ambition and aspiration. As Labour builds a new vision of a progressive England, these are the words we must live by.

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Jamie Reed is member of parliament for Copeland

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Photo: Leon Brocard