Local power
If Scottish Labour is to win again, it needs a project worthy of government, argues Joe Fagan
The question for Scottish Labour is not only how we win again. It is what we are asking to win for.
After defeats, parties often turn inward. They argue about structures and personalities, about selections and processes. While important, too often this misses a key point: we failed to win the support of the people of Scotland. That is what we must now focus on.
How do we win that support back?
The answer cannot be another argument conducted inside the Holyrood bubble, for the benefit of the Holyrood bubble. It cannot be a contest about who has been in Parliament the longest, or who is best placed to stop someone else. It has to be about the values Scottish Labour needs to represent: people, communities and place.
The result in May was not just disappointing. It was a warning. After 20 years of SNP government, with public services under severe pressure and councils cut to the bone, Labour returned 17 MSPs and finished level with Reform. We cannot explain that away. People were not convinced we had yet become the vehicle for change they needed.
The purpose must be to build a Labour project for Scotland that is serious enough for government, rooted enough to earn trust, and bold enough to change where power and wealth sit in our country.
Labour needs ideas, but they must be ideas that survive contact with people’s lives, not just those designed to appease the Westminster and Holyrood bubbles.
So, we should start with the questions people ask in the places they live.
Can people afford to live in the community they come from? Can they find good work close enough to build a life around it? Do local services work when people need them? Does public money stay in the local economy, or does it leak away? Do people feel decisions are being made with them, or handed down to them?
Too often in Scotland, the answer is obvious.
Good jobs have left too many towns. Young people are pushed away from the communities that raised them. Local services are stretched. Buses are unreliable. Care services are under pressure. Councils are expected to deliver national promises without the power, certainty or funding needed to make them real.
Devolution rightly moved power from London to Edinburgh. But too much of that power stopped there. A stronger Scotland in a changing UK must mean pushing power beyond Edinburgh to councils, communities, workplaces and local institutions.
That is what I mean by building local power.
It is not a slogan. It is a way of governing. It means trusting local government as a partner in national renewal, not treating councils as delivery agents to be blamed when centrally set targets are missed. It means giving communities more say over the assets, services and decisions that shape their lives. It means recognising that the people closest to a problem often know most about how to fix it.
It also means building local wealth.
For too long, too much wealth created in Scotland has flowed out of Scotland. Public money should do more to support local jobs, Scottish businesses, co-operatives, social enterprises and supply chains. Anchor institutions should use their spending power to strengthen local economies. Procurement should be judged not only by the lowest price, but by whether it creates good work, apprenticeships, skills and community benefit.
Scottish Labour should be the party of workers and wealth builders. The people who care, build, teach, clean, drive, manufacture, engineer, serve and start businesses. The people who keep Scotland going and want politics to make their lives easier, not more complicated.
That starts with more money in people’s pockets, better services on people’s doorsteps and practical change people can feel.
Public service reform must be part of that. But reform cannot become a polite word for cuts. Scotland cannot cut its way to stronger public services. Reform should mean prevention and early intervention. It should mean backing the workforce, funding councils fairly and giving local services the freedom to solve problems before they become crises.
It should also mean learning from where Labour has won. In South Lanarkshire, I led a minority council through difficult budgets. We made swimming free for under-16s, helped families with household costs and improved pay for home-care workers. We worked with trade unions and kept services running.
I do not pretend that local government has all the answers. But I know what it means to make decisions that affect people’s daily lives. Schools still have to open. Care visits still have to happen. The numbers still have to add up. I do not regard that as lesser political experience. It is the experience Scottish Labour needs more of.
That same test should apply to Scotland’s industrial future.
The transition to a low-carbon economy cannot be something done to workers after decisions have already been made. North Sea oil and gas workers, manufacturing workers and supply-chain businesses need a real industrial future, not warm words after jobs have gone. The new jobs must exist before the old ones disappear.
The story of the North Sea need not be a story of decline. Scotland has huge opportunities in offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon capture, ports, manufacturing and engineering. But opportunity will not be enough unless we build the skills, supply chains and industrial strategy to capture it.
The Fabian tradition has always understood that values need institutions. Fairness is not delivered by speeches. Equality is not delivered by branding. Power is changed through laws, budgets, councils, public services, workplaces and communities.
That is the Labour project Scotland needs now.
A party serious about government. A party rooted in place. A party that builds homes, backs work, protects services, grows local wealth and hands power back to people.
Continuity will not cut it. If Labour wants to win again, we have to stop talking to ourselves and start proving again that we are on people’s side.
