Councils across London desperately searched for a solution to the housing benefit cap that made it impossible for some of the capital’s poorest residents to stay in their homes.

First we heard of plans to move residents to Darlington, Stoke, Hull and parts of Yorkshire. But the revelation that Westminster Council planned to ship up to 150 of its residents to Derby and Nottingham really brought the issue home in more ways than one. I have no beef with Westminster Council, and that it is Conservative-run is of no concern here. Indeed, Labour-run councils are faced with a similar predicament and were forced into the same quandary.

What angers me, though, is that David Cameron and his Government don’t seem to give a second thought to the very real impact on people here.

My first reaction to the news, as a Derby person born and bred, was concern for our city’s residents already on the housing waiting list, and the impact this would have on them. But it was considering this fiasco from another perspective that really put into perspective how out of touch the Government is with the damage it is doing to our society.

What about those families involved? Most would passionate about being from London as I am about being from Derby. How would they feel about being forced hundreds of miles away from the only place they know as home? And what about the children involved? Ripped from their schools, their friends and the hearts of their communities, for no better reason than the Government charged with protecting them has thrown them into poverty.

At every level, it was shameful state of affairs – resulting directly from yet another Government saving which targets the poorest.

It was an utterly disgraceful result of an ill-thought out policy designed to hit the poorest and most vulnerable.

What the Government should be doing is addressing the inadequate supply of affordable housing and the spiralling levels of private sector rents.

It is worth remembering that it was the Conservatives who said it didn’t matter if rent levels increased because “housing benefit would take the strain”. It was the Conservatives who moved housing subsidies away from building affordable homes to funding higher rents through housing benefit. And it was the Conservatives who sought to stigmatise social housing.

Now we have a housing crisis which is entirely the fault of an ideologically driven decision by Margaret Thatcher’s Government to smash council housing. The Tory Party ideologues recognised that council tenants tended to vote Labour and embarked on a policy of naked gerrymandering.

Switching housing subsidies from bricks and mortar into housing benefit also allowed private landlords to cash in on this new publicly funded cash cow. And cash in they did. Rogue private landlords couldn’t believe their luck. Many of them became millionaires courtesy of the Conservatives inequitable use of public money.

Thirty years later, their catastrophic legacy is resulting in London councils like Westminster being forced to consider such desperate measures. But what I find so ghastly about this whole sorry saga is the utter duplicity of this Tory-Lib Dem Government that blames the victims of a previous administration’s policy failure.

That is why we must address the inadequate supply of affordable housing and the crazy housing subsidy system that supports high rents in the private sector – in spite of the benefit cap.

Chris Williamson is the Labour MP for Derby North.

Related posts:

1. Cameron’s Housing Benefit proposal is a nasty attack on the young
2. No way to solve a housing crisis
3. Osborne harks back to Thatcher with his “killer app”
4. Don’t bet the house on it: no turning back to housing boom and bust
5. Our social housing behemoths ignore the empty properties which a bit of self-help can bring back into use

Or so we have been told ever since the Coalition was formed in the rose gardens of Number 10 Downing Street. The overwhelming majority of the media has gladly reinforced the Government line, and those voices calling for an alternative have been marginalised and ignored.

That is what makes the findings of this week’s YouGov poll by the new trade union-backed Class think-tank all the more striking. The austerity consensus has collapsed – at least among the British public. Class tested the popularity of a number of policies championed by victorious French Socialist Presidential candidate François Hollande: the results surprised even an optimistic lefty like myself. 56% supported a new 75% top rate of income tax on those earning over £1 million: even more than four in ten Conservative voters backed the idea.

Seven out of ten believed that ‘redistributing wealth from the richest in society’ was an important aim in ‘setting economic policy’. While bringing the deficit down was considered ‘very important’ or ‘fairly important’ by 85%, the British public were near-unanimous (with 95% support) about the Government’s role in creating jobs and reducing unemployment, as well as encouraging economic growth.

In another departure from neo-liberal economics, 74% were behind proposals to establish a publicly-owned bank to lend to small and medium businesses. It is a demand that once languished on the fringes of British politics – but it is now firmly in the mainstream.

With house-building at the lowest levels for nearly a century, the British people are willing to back radical action. 64% support a national programme of building half a million new homes a year, including 150,000 new council homes. Most alive today will not remember that – in the 1950s – the Conservatives and Labour competed over who could build more council housing.

What is particularly striking about these findings is that the Government has been highly effective at hiding the failures of its austerity agenda. Most respondents were not aware that the Coalition has had to push its target for eradicating the deficit back to 2017, meaning at least two more years of cuts. Indeed, nearly seven out of ten did not know that 90% of the Government’s cuts are yet to take place.

When Lehman Brothers came crashing down nearly four years ago, there was some rather naïve hope (as it turns out) that neo-liberalism was a dead ideology walking. But the crisis has turned out to be one of the biggest opportunities neo-liberalism has ever had: across Europe, the frontiers of the state are being forced back, taxes on the rich slashed, services privatised, and jobs and wages cut.

But this poll is yet more compelling evidence that the mood is definitely changing. The forces of austerity have had a kicking in France and Greece; in the Netherlands, for example, the anti cuts Socialist Party is doing well in the polls. The backlash against austerity has arrived in Britain, too. Space has opened for a radical departure from the consensus: it now needs to be tapped into.

Today, Class hosted its first public seminar in Canary Wharf – the heart of British finance – bringing together a range of economists, academics and experts. There isn’t a lack of alternative policies on offer, but so far there has been a failure to link them together in a coherent narrative. If we are to genuinely defeat the neo-liberal consensus, that is the task ahead. Class will undoubtedly play an absolutely key role in doing just that here in Britain.

Related posts:

1. Gordon Brown slams Greek bailout – and warns Europe over austerity
2. Unemployment figures show austerity isn’t working
3. We need more growth from the EU, Mr. Cameron, not more austerity
4. Exploding myths on austerity
5. Austerity or prosperity

The Football Taskforce was established soon after Labour came to power in 1997, with the task of producing three reports on how football could be improved. Then, as now, the levels of unsustainable debt swilling around the game were of great concern to many, as was the often-marginalised status of supporters.

It was from this second point that Supporters Direct (SD) emerged. Announced at the 1999 Labour conference and officially launched in January 2000, SD began working to a business plan that envisaged the establishment of 50 Supporters’ Trusts (constituted as fully democratic Community Benefit Societies and regulated by the Financial Services Authority) over three years.

It soon became clear that the initial estimate was conservative at best, and that many football supporters across the UK wished to come together under simple, democratic principles, and push for increased influence at their club. Since then, over 170 have been established, with 25 fully owning or controlling their local club, over 100 in possession of shareholding, and over 60 sitting on the board of directors at their club, representing the views of their members and the local community. Over 300,000 people in the UK are a member of a Supporters’ Trust, and collectively the Trust movement has raised over £30 million of new finance for the game since 2000. SD’s funding over the same period has been £5 million.

Meanwhile, football has continued to struggle with unsustainable spending, and long-standing governance issues. In January 2011, Sports Minister Hugh Robertson described the game as “the worst-governed sport in the country, without a doubt”; and a July report from the Select Committee for the Department for Culture, Media and Sport reinforced this notion, delivering a number of long-overdue recommendations for reform.

Endorsed by the Government in October, it outlined the need to reform the Football Association board “to carry out its responsibilities effectively and meet the future challenges of the game”; the introduction of “a formal licensing model imposed rigorously and consistently throughout professional English football”; and “means of giving properly constituted supporters trusts, or consortia which include supporters trusts, an opportunity to make a successful matching bid for a club that has gone into administration.”

The report was widely welcomed by the Supporters’ Trust movement, which has had to overcome significant legal and bureaucratic hurdles in order to achieve its current success. David Wright MP summed up the feelings of many on March 22^nd, when he put the following question to Mr Robertson in the House: “the key issue is supporter ownership of clubs, which is absolutely crucial. At AFC Telford United, we have a superb model of club ownership by supporters. What more is the Minister’s Department going to do to model, with clubs and owners, new structures for supporter ownership of clubs?”

It was also a question directed at the football authorities. In February of this year, Supporters Direct launched their Key Principles for Club Licensing in England at the House of Commons, in an event attended by over 40 Members and featuring a speech from Tom Greatrex MP (himself a founder member of the Fulham Supporters’ Trust). The proposals call for the introduction of a model influenced by that followed in Germany, where the Bundesliga has had the highest average attendance per match in Europe for the past nine seasons, and an average ticket price of under €20.

Unfortunately, to date the Football Association, Premier League and Football League have shown little appetite for initiating the changes that are so crucial to the long-term health of the game. Mr Robertson has sent their response (published on March 9th) back to the Committee for consideration, and it is vital that the issue of football governance reform remains on the agenda; lest another opportunity to improve the health of our national game slips away.

Ben Shave is a Development Officer at Supporters Direct.

Related posts:

1. Racism in football – a long way gone, a long way to go
2. Putting mutualism back at the heart of football
3. How Cameron can really help British football
4. A new politics for football?
5. Football is less equal than ever – now we need the spirit of those great Socialists of the game

But is the party’s policy-making system fit for purpose? Partnership in Power, launched in 1997, envisaged hundreds of discussions across the country, with members, affiliates and supporters feeding upwards through policy commissions to the national policy forum (NPF). The NPF has held just two rushed meetings in two years – leading the first representatives elected by one-member-one-vote to wonder why they bothered – but more alarmingly the nature of grassroots input has fundamentally changed.

Anecdotally many constituencies and branches have stopped sending contributions, whether formal resolutions or consensus notes from forums, because there is no sign that anyone listens. The impact is illustrated vividly in the list of 115 new submissions received at the May meeting of the prosperity and work commission. Just two were from local parties, in North-East Bedfordshire and Guildford. All the rest were from individuals, and of these only a quarter were members.

They are a fascinating mix of closely-reasoned arguments, strongly-held opinions, assorted rants, and musings on whether to join or leave the party, alongside some distressing personal stories about the welfare bureaucracy. Now clearly Labour must listen widely and reach beyond members into the community, and clearly not every member can attend local policy forums, where they exist. These messages matter. But we risk replacing collective conversations, inside and beyond the party, with atomised individuals firing off whatever is on their mind as they browse the website, alone. This is no way to build a manifesto.

The trend will be reinforced by the latest batch of consultation papers, published here. Constituencies are urged to send submissions by 8 June to inform an NPF meeting on 16/17 June , but four weeks’ notice is too short for many parties, leaving individual input as the only channel. I will argue that later contributions should be taken into account by the official structures, but in any case I am interested in views all the way through to conference. So please read the papers and respond, and copy comments to me as otherwise I may not see them.

Finally, on a more optimistic note, the reshuffle made significant changes at the top. Jon Cruddas will take over from Liam Byrne in co-ordinating a policy review hitherto shrouded in mystery, and Angela Eagle has been nominated to chair the NPF following Peter Hain’s return to the backbenches. I hope that they will bring new openness in engaging with members, and stronger dialogue with the volunteers on the ground. The next general election is at stake.

Ann Black is a member of the NEC and the National Policy Forum, currently standing for re-election.

Related posts:

1. Better policy-making means better policies
2. Shouting at the telly – policy-making in today’s Labour Party
3. Rebuilding trust and integrity in policy making
4. With Alexander, Labour is humming a new tune on foreign policy
5. Making it…Against the Odds: tune in for tonight’s broadcast

And as for why Labour did better in 2012 compared to the 2011 elections – just compare May and May 2012.

A year is a long time in politics…

Related posts:

1. Going down! How the government’s approval rating has plunged since budget day
2. There is no budget bounce…yet
3. Labour’s budget bounce continues
4. Labour’s budget bounce
5. Workmanlike and risk-free: Darling’s centre ground budget

In 2013 we face a different task, when the counties of England go to the polls in mostly all out elections.

We should hope that the Police Commissioner elections in November will help with our organisation and presence across swathes of rural England; and while the voters of urban England may well be more accessible to us, our ability to maintain electoral momentum in 2013 requires a meaningful engagement in every part of England.

To achieve such meaningful engagement two particular conditions need to be met.

Ed Miliband is right to suggest we need to overcome the lack of trust in politics and politicians. One part of the answer to that is to return to the roots of political representation and build our representation from the communities we seek to serve. That requires presence in the community, and a presence that is about being part of the community, not a passing engagement driven by election timetables.

We should learn from the vast array of local activism that takes place in almost every place day in, day out; and we should be a part of it because we are an active part of our community (rather than a local ‘party’ activist). We should probably learn from historic Lib Dem successes where they identify and support active local people with Lib Dem sympathies, support them in local campaigns on the way to being a local representative. It cannot be the case, as I’ve seen on two or three occasions that people who run chip shops are only sympathetic to Lib Dem policies!

The Future Candidates Programme suggest the party gets this, do we as members accept that in many cases active community members might be better placed as candidates than an stalwart party member might be . . .

Being part of the community can show people that we are in politics and representation for the right reasons; and that being Labour does make a difference to their lives day in, day out, irrespective of elections.

And then, of course, we need to show we have some policies that properly recognise the nature of non-urban life, of life in the countryside, in market towns, hamlets and villages.

Many market towns are thriving places with variety and character, but not all. Can we help those that aren’t, turn the corner? With declining public transport getting about requires your own car, if you have one and can afford the fuel, while broadband is a fleeting presence if you’re lucky. Public service is different in places where there is only one secondary school, or the nearest hospital is many miles away (and the second further still).

Does the centre ground include people who live in market towns and rural areas? Personal experience, my work as an advisor at both CLG and Defra, and the 2012 results from district councils suggest they probably do. Our challenge is to show that Labour people are a part of their lives and that Labour has the policies to reflect that.

Hywel Lloyd was a Policy Advisor to Ministers in CLG and in Defra 2007/2010

No related posts.

Let’s remember the time-consuming and expensive aircraft carrier debacle. Ministers have reverted to purchasing the fast jets earmarked by the previous Labour Government after deriding our plans as a ‘mistake’. Hammond’s sole argument is that the facts have changed, but in truth he has changed his mind after examining the facts.

The Public Accounts Committee warned of the rising cost of the Government’s policy. The National Audit Office warned that the Government had an ‘immature understanding’ of costs.  The Defence Select Committee warned against strategic shrinkage. Ministers failed to heed these multiple warnings.

It was the Prime Minister himself who referred to the previous Labour Government’s decision as an ‘error’.  This certainly wasn’t the first time that he over-reached himself. His claim that the rushed defence review would allow Britain to maintain ‘full-spectrum capability’ was subsequently derided by the Defence Select Committee.

Incompetence and hubris characterise the Government’s carrier policy, and still we don’t know how much this u-turn has squandered. At various points, the MoD has claimed the cost to be £37 million, £50 million and £100 million. Other estimates have put the cost as high as £258 million. British taxpayers and the men and women of our Armed Forces deserve better. In hard times such as these, it is absolutely essential the Government publish the exact total in full.

This shambles is compounded by the needless scrapping of the Harrier fleet in the defence review. They were sold to the Americans for a fraction of their value, shedding essential skills and expertise which will now need to be replaced. This decision also means that Britain, a proud maritime nation, will be without aircraft on our aircraft carriers—an important capability gap—for a decade. You don’t have to be an expert military strategist to understand that if our aircraft carriers have no aircraft on them, then something has gone seriously wrong.

Government ministers have nobody to blame but themselves. The Prime Minister’s decisions have cost British time, money, talent and prestige and he must accept responsibility for this.

The biggest political cost to the Government, however, will be that it is no longer trusted on Defence. The carrier u-turn is not just another chapter in the ongoing ‘omnishambles’, but will also mark a watershed in the public’s trust in the Government’s handling of Defence policy.

It is no wonder, then, that the reaction to the Defence Secretary’s claim to have balanced the budget was to reach for the bucket of salt. He is repeating what his predecessor claimed, only before he was forced to admit he got his figures wrong and announce another wave of Army cuts. We will judge this not on these reheated claims but on the detail.

Already many questions abound. These plans are built on the assumption of a 1% rise in equipment spending over the next ten years which is not guaranteed.  They only refer to the Defence Equipment budget, which is 45% of the overall MoD budget, leaving 55% of an annual £35bn budget unaccounted for a decade. The statement was also based on the claim that Ministers have overcome the problems of cost and time over-runs on equipment programmes despite failing to make any meaningful reforms to defence procurement.  The Defence Secretary has said he will publish the full equipment programme to prove his claims, but cannot say when; he boasts about a plan for transparency that remains hidden.

Moreover, the Defence Secretary has based his actions—which include 30,000 redundancies, cuts to frontline allowances and cuts to equipment—on his claim the Government inherited a £38 billion budget deficit.  The Defence Select Committee, the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee and Professor Malcolm Chalmers have all described this as unverifiable. The Government has yet to publish how it arrived at this figure, and until it does, cannot credibly claim a sound grasp on the Ministry of Defence budget.

People are routinely asked to take the Government’s word that its figures are correct, but following ministers’ chaotic handling of the strategically vital aircraft carrier programme it is not surprising many are so sceptical. With this Government’s creditability on Defence at a new low we will need to see hard, un-spun figures before we are convinced of the merits of Philip Hammond’s claims.

Related posts:

1. Disarray on defence poses a competence test for the Chancellor
2. The beginning of Labour’s Shadow Defence Review
3. Cutting the deficit but not spending (nor raising taxes)
4. Murphy urges government to reopen defence review
5. Is the acceptance that government spending cuts are needed being exploited?

So why do we need wealth taxes? For a start, they raise around £15 billion a year, equivalent to a quarter of the education budget. Giving this up would mean raising taxes elsewhere or cutting spending. While the Commission certainly advocates further spending cuts, it provides no explanation of where they will fall or who in society will lose out.

But beyond raising revenue, wealth taxes play an important role in the UK tax system. They help to reduce tax avoidance, widen the tax base, reduce the burden on earned income and could have a role in reducing the volatility of the housing market.

The justification for wealth taxes is strengthened by social justice arguments. Wealth is spread far more unequally than income in most countries, and the UK is no exception, with the top 10% owning more than the 100 times the wealth of the bottom 10%.

However, the Commission is right to argue that existing wealth taxes in the UK are badly designed. But the response should be to reform rather to remove.

Inheritance has the strongest grounds for being taxed. Stark differences in wealth, combined with low inheritance tax, exacerbate inequality. Those at the top are more likely to have something to leave than those at the bottom. The Commission argues that inheritance tax discourages savings, but the expectation of receiving inheritance is likely to have the same effect. The current inheritance tax system is flawed because it is open to avoidance by those with enough disposable income and understanding of the tax system to give away their assets in advance, making it deeply unpopular with the middle classes

Rather than scrapping inheritance tax, a fairer option would be a tax on lifetime gifts. The more an individual receives, the more tax they would pay, and even levying a tax only on gifts worth more than £150,000 could generate £1 billion more in revenue than inheritance tax currently.

Similarly, the Stamp Duty Land Tax is in serious need of reform.  The current bands do not work. A £1 rise in house price from £500,000 to £500,001 lifts the stamp duty by £5,000.

Reforming stamp duty would see it become a marginal tax which applies gradually as property values rise.

In the longer term, more radical reforms would look to raise extra revenues from property and land taxes, for example through a land value tax on undeveloped land. There is broad agreement from economists and commentators across the political spectrum that land is a good basis for tax but the practicalities and politics are difficult. Additional revenues raised from property and land taxes could be used to reduce the burden on earned income or to ensure that tax rises make a greater contribution to deficit reduction than under current plans.

No one likes paying tax. But in developing Labour’s next manifesto, newly appointed Jon Cruddas should confront the issue of wealth taxation as part of efforts to secure the public finances and achieve greater social justice. Tax is always going to be taxing but it could be fairer.

Imogen Parker is Researcher at IPPR

Related posts:

1. Tax should be taxing
2. Three brilliant points made by George Osborne
3. Why the left should resist the temptation of the Mansion Tax
4. A citizens tax on inheritance would spread wealth, freedom and opportunity
5. Time to correct Brown’s most shameful act – or we’ll deserve to lose

But I would be being dishonest if I allowed that piece to stand alone; to be my last recorded thoughts on Labour’s operations. The sunshine has come out just as the Party completes the move to what I am told are lovely new premises at Brewers Green, and with the sun and the move, has come a new optimism in the Party about the Party. With the announcement that 100 candidates be in place by next year and 200 organisers will be in place by 2014, great wins in the local elections and a new sense of momentum behind Ed and the Party, there is a real relish for the challenge of making Labour a one-term opposition that was perhaps lacking by the end of last year.

Of course, I should have had more confidence in my choice for General Secretary.

Iain’s not a man who does showy or grandiose, so I was perhaps overwhelmed by the spectacle of the loud opposition to his changes and their spectacular nature. But one of Iain’s greatest strengths is a quiet determination. He’s a soft-spoken man with a black belt in karate – the perfect metaphor for the man and the way he has quietly but assuredly started pulling the Labour Party back together following our dreadful defeat in 2010. So while some elements in Victoria Street were exploding, and those like myself were commenting on the worst of the public display, Iain seems to have got on with things, waiting until the time was right to start unleashing his own plan to rebuild the Party key constituency by key constituency.

It’s public knowledge that Iain wasn’t Ed’s choice for General Secretary. But this doesn’t seem to have fazed either of them. Ed seems to make a habit of surrounding himself with those who didn’t support him for leadership (Jon Cruddas being the latest example), so maybe it’s just something they’re both comfortable with. Certainly both are getting on with it.

I haven’t been to Brewers Green yet, but I’m told it’s a lovely space: airy and light with floor to ceiling windows. Working spaces matter and they do affect morale. Labour has a newly consolidated poll lead, and a reasonably new leader and General Secretary. The sunshine also seems to have delivered us a new and sunnier disposition. It’s not complacency, and from every experience I have had with both Iain and with Ed, it will never be allowed to become complacency. But it’s a sense that we are moving beyond self-flagellating gloom to a place where we can offer the British people some answers.

The self-confidence will come and go. My optimism will wax and wane. There will always be things about the way the Party behaves – either organisationally or politically – that I disagree with. I wouldn’t be a blogger if I didn’t want to write about those disagreements, why I felt them and what I felt ought to be done.

But I wouldn’t be being an honest broker with the Party I love if I just left it at that. There are people at the top of our Party who are doing a really good job. Who are turning around, slowly but surely, our ailing machine. Who are bringing their understanding of the enormous changes needed to our structure and our organisation and are making real changes to them.

It’s a long slow process. We’ll have moments where mistakes are made. We’ll have other moments where the pyrotechnics crowd out the progress. But progress is being made. And we owe a debt of enormous gratitude for that to Iain McNicol. We don’t say it often enough in politics, so I’m going to take this chance now: Thank you Iain.

Related posts:

1. Iain McNicol responds to reports on party restructure
2. New General Secretary Iain McNicol addresses conference
3. The challenges facing Iain McNicol
4. Who is Iain McNicol?
5. General Secretary candidate Iain McNicol answers your questions

But it will contain an even more important set of ballot papers – for the selection of Labour candidates for the police commissioner elections in November. These will be hugely influential roles, agreeing budgets and strategy with chief constables, representing the public to the police, and being an elected figure-head atop the constabularies of England and Wales. In many areas, the police commissioner taking up office on Monday 26th November will be Labour. They will become the most prominent and influential Labour politician in their area, responsible for a bigger chunk of the public sector than any shadow minister.

Yesterday, the Home Office announced that the new police commissioners will be expected to swear an ‘oath of impartiality’ on taking up office. If you have people elected as police commissioners on party political tickets (and my prediction is that none of the ‘independents’ will win, if Siobhan Benita’s fifth placing in London with 3.8% of the votes is any sort of guide) then what does ‘impartial’ mean?

Of course police commissioners must not interfere with the operational running of a police force, any more than the leader of a council gets directly involved in child protection or housing allocation. And of course, like a Member of Parliament or councillor, they must represent everyone in their patch, not just those who voted for them. But will a Labour police commissioner behave in the same way as a Tory or a BNP commissioner? Will how they spend their time, the meetings they hold, the visits they conduct, and the speeches they make be identical?

No they won’t. They will reflect their Labour values, and the pledges they made in these elections. Presumably, they will hold local surgeries and take up case-work. So they will be partial, not impartial. A Labour police commissioner will champion the victims of crime, and ensure the poorest estates and most deprived neighbourhoods get their fair share of policing. They will speak up against Hate Crimes, and domestic violence. They will campaign against the government’s 20% cuts to policing and the loss of front-line officers. They will oppose privatisation of core services such as police patrols.

An oath promising to serve the people is a positive thing. It will be a marked improvement on the MPs’ oath to ‘solemnly, sincerely and truly declare and affirm that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, her heirs and successors, according to law’ which even the most red of red republicans must swear before taking up their seats. We should hope that an oath sworn by a police commissioner should contain instead a pledge to serve the people and the law. But an oath of ‘impartiality’ is a nonsense if it means commissioners should not act like politicians. If ministers didn’t want politicians, they shouldn’t be spending £75 million of our money on elections to elect more politicians.

There’s a growing sense that the government is panicking over police commissioners. When they were dreamt up in opposition by a Tory think tank, they were supposed to be part of a radical reshaping of our democracy, with more direct influence and control by the people. Tory MPs in each constabulary area were charged with finding new and eye-catching candidates to excite the public. In Sussex, the job was given to that Tory arch-moderniser Nicholas Soames. His only notable acts have been to carve out the sitting chair of the police authority Cllr Steve Waight, and to insist that the candidate be selected at a one-off hustings meeting by whichever card-carrying Tories show up.

Nick Herbert, the police minister, encouraged ‘dynamic leaders, community champions, pioneers and entrepreneurs to consider standing for this office. They need not be politicians and they could be independent of political parties.’

Yet the last best hope for the Tories, Colonel Tim Collins in Kent, announced this week that he would not, after all, be seeking the Conservative nomination. So we are left with a crop of Conservative candidates who represent ‘business as usual’: councillors, ex-members of the police authority, overwhelmingly white, male and middle-class. Grey, dull committee men. It’s a nightmare for ministers. They wanted celebs and entrepreneurs, and they’ve ended up with shire Tories. The black labrador, Range Rover, gymkhana set are back.

The Labour candidates coming forward represent a diverse spread of backgrounds. John Prescott is seeking the Labour nomination in Humberside, up against the former chief constable Keith Hunter. In Gloucestershire, Rupi Dhanda has been selected. In Manchester, former minister Tony Lloyd is standing. Sarah Russell has been selected in Leicestershire. On Merseyside, Jane Kennedy is the one to beat. Vera Baird is picking up support on Northumbria. In North Yorkshire Ruth Potter has been selected. Jane Basham has been selected in Suffolk. This is merely a snapshot, but it shows candidates from diverse backgrounds, with deep roots in their communities and experience of representing people.

When you hear that thud on your doormat, please cast your votes. We need Labour campaigners who can turn the police commissioner elections into a referendum on Theresa May and her 20% cuts to our police. With county council elections next year, and Euro elections the year after, every vote for Labour will count.

Paul Richards is seeking the Labour nomination for police commissioner in Sussex.

Related posts:

1. Police and Crime commissioners – the shortlisted candidates
2. Police and Crime Commissioners: 7 questions for ‘independent’ candidates
3. Is there a thin blue line for the new Police and Crime Commissioners?
4. Labour must view the election of police commissioners as an opportunity
5. Police Crime Commissioners – what might be in their manifestos?