In their combined report based on an extensive survey and entitled ‘Holding Onto Hope: Lessons from Community Britain’, Hope Not Hate and The Co-operative Party (a sister organisation of Labour which has some 43 MPs among its ranks) polling showed that 42% of people described the country as “declining.”
In addition, the numbers complaining that they were unheard by politicians were extremely high from voters of all hues. 88% of Reform voters felt this, while the figures for all the other parties, with the exception of Labour voters (54%) hovered in the 70 percentages.
Declining UK: local government may be the answer
While ‘levelling up’ was ostensibly a Tory policy, parroted time and again by the Johnson government from 2019 and beyond, it always received tacit support from the opposition Labour party. Six years on and, so far, an abject failure, it now seems it that the government departments bearing its name have been re-packaged as ‘local government’.
Whatever the moniker, the aim remains the same – pulling up Britain’s depressed areas by the bootstraps. The prize in votes is huge, but now it seems the race is being won by Reform UK, despite them offering little more than headline-grabbing promises and immigrant deportations.
While 55% of all voters are proud of their community, there is a clear sense that they do not feel their fate is in their own hands. 65% either strongly agree or agree that “Local Government should be given more power and resources from central Government so local people can decide how best to prioritise public spending”.
The report concludes “while people feel disconnected from national politics, it’s clear they remain deeply connected to their communities”.
Reform UK blame issues on immigration: debunking the myths
Rebuilding trust in national politics must start at local government level. While Reform UK, backed by an increasingly hysterical right wing media, point the finger of blame at an immigration policy that has (in their words) “pushed Britain to breaking point”, they ignore the fact that the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimates that immigrants contribute some £83bn annually to the UK economy. The Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration shows that migrants from outside the EU (since Brexit the clear majority) pay approximately £4.6bn more in taxes than they receive in benefits and public services.
The frequently cited trope about migrants ‘clogging up the NHS’ bears little scrutiny, given that the demographics show that most are in their 20s and 30s and are thus palpably healthier. Meanwhile blaming ‘health tourism’ is a non-starter, as it accounts for a mere 0.3% of the total annual health expenditure. With recent figures showing net migration falling from 860,000 to 431,000 in the year to December 2024, Reform UK are realising that they need more populist themes to maintain their momentum. Net Zero is in their crosshairs, and conflating this with high gas and electricity pricing is scoring them points, particularly in deprived areas.
Investing in the future means investing in communities
The Hope Not Hate/Co-operative Party report states that “shifting to the right on immigration ignores the underlying reasons why people hold those concerns: fears about economic security, strained public services, hopes for safe and cohesive communities and fairness in the welfare system.” Rebuilding trust in politics should not just pander to false panaceas about ceasing immigration or trashing Net Zero, but relies on putting more power into the hands of those in the community through local government reform. As the report says, what is needed is “a radical resetting of politics so that it is hyper-focused on communities […] to offer people who have given up on politics […] a new type of politics to try.”
Of course, this requires investment and to a certain extent, a leap of faith. Nick Lowles, founder and chief executive of Hope Not Hate, said investing in communities is “the only way we can fight the rise of Reform UK”.
Now what? A step-by-step plan to empower communities
The report from Hope Not Hate and the Co-operative Party concludes by positing some interesting proposals.
• Publish a comprehensive communities strategy with input from across Government and ensure effective implementation of the strategy at a local government level.
• Invest in communities, continuing the positive steps set out in the Government’s recent £1.5bn Plan for Neighbourhoods, which allows groups of local people to themselves direct local funding.
• Continue to devolve real power to communities, including implementing the Community Right to Buy and taking further steps to support communities wishing to save local assets through community ownership.
• Develop clear definitions of social connectedness and community cohesion with metrics for measuring cohesion at local and national levels to provide a framework for progress.
• Encourage community ownership of key social infrastructure like community centres, libraries, parks and pubs, to help put an end to the decade-long trend which has seen these spaces disappear from too many communities.
• Actively support the development of participatory models like co-operatives and community enterprises, which give local people a route to genuine decision-making, power and control.
• Include the role of communities in Government’s national resilience plans, including the ongoing Cabinet Office review, reflecting the proven role of communities in responding to crises ranging from pandemics to riots.
• Focus on social as well as physical infrastructure, reflecting the findings in this report around the aspects of community valued by people, which include access to shared spaces and community identity.
The urgent need to put the ‘local’ back in local government
Ironically, there’s no avoiding the fact that the solutions must start with politics, but not the politicking indulged in by some parties. But then we are back at the breakdown in trust. One of the most surefire ways to engender more trust in politics is to invest in it at lower level through local government.While people maintain pride in their local areas, lack of serious investment in local government leaves it hanging by a thread. Populist parties like Reform UK gain ground by simply appearing to empathise, albeit without credible economic policy solutions, and their promises are wafer-thin. Giving people the means to enhance their own dignity and self-respect by participating directly in the future of their own communities must be a pathway that the government would be well-minded to consider very seriously. Has the time come to really put the ‘local’ in local government before ‘decline’ becomes ‘fall’?
