Meet Jon Trickett, the shadow communities secretary who thinks the way to solve inequality is to give real power back to councils

Jon Trickett, the shadow communities secretary, says he has a vision for a fairer Britain: one that doesn’t leave poorer areas to languish or public sector staff agonising over decisions between elderly care and libraries. A country that doesn’t impose draconian cuts on struggling councils, or mayors on communities against their will.

The local government department, despite councils having already faced a 40% cut to their funding since 2010, has just agreed to slash around a further 30% from its budget over the next four years, with public health and adult social care particularly at risk.

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But despite the government’s austerity agenda, Trickett is hopeful Labour-led councils can make a difference all over the country. As leader of Leeds city council while Margaret Thatcher was at her most powerful – “she literally threw everything she could at local government in an attempt to destroy it” – he was able to create 30,000 jobs in the city, while reforming the way different public services worked together.

“We are dealing with a more sophisticated bunch of Tories now, but they are still Tories,” he says, describing Osborne as a big bad wolf. “This is more savage than anything I faced under Mrs Thatcher, from the point of view of local government.”

Changes that will allow councils to keep the money they raise from business rates – which Chancellor George Osborne has described as “the biggest transfer of power to our local government in living memory” – also concern Trickett. Councils lucky enough to have a business park or retail outlet, or to be located in central London, have an intrinsic advantage, he says. “The Tories are taking away the redistribution method and we have no idea what it will be replaced with. I fear that it will compound an already unfair system.”

The closure of the Redcar steel plant and the consequent loss of business rates for its Teeside council has pushed inequality into sharp focus. Many areas of Britain are suffering after years of neglect and underinvestment, Trickett points out.

But the MP for Hemsworth, who was instrumental in Ed Miliband’s rise to Labour leadership and the first MP to publicly nominate Jeremy Corbyn for leader, says he is determined to push for greater equality. Unlike many of his Westminster contemporaries, he is not a typical career politician. Having left school at 15 with no qualifications, he trained as a plumber and a builder to fund his way through university (he studied in Hull under the late Ralph Miliband).

“There’s a general feeling that a closed circle at the top are running this country in their own interests. It’s not working,” he says. But he points to the equalising forces of technology and social media. “The age of deference died quite a long time ago … public services need to catch up.”

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Trickett is especially sceptical of the northern powerhouse. Although many Labour-led councils are lining up to do devolution deals with the Tories – Greater Manchester was the first to accept an elected mayor in exchange for powers over transport, housing, planning, policing and public health – Labour is keen to derail the cities and local government devolution bill currently making its way through parliament.

Among the criticisms levelled against the bill, Trickett has denounced it as a “dictatorship”, offering the pretence of devolution in a stunt to set up councils to take the blame for cuts. Not all Labour MPs agree with him; Clive Betts, representing Sheffield South East, and Graham Stringer, MP for Blackley and Broughton, have publicly supported the bill.

“My own feeling is that if you’re going to do devolution properly, you have to give local government fiscal powers,” Trickett says. “The truth is the Tories are not devolving real power, they’re delegating cuts.”

So far devolution deals have focused on big city regions, with the exception of Cornwall, and Trickett questions why the Tories have become obsessed with less than a dozen big cities. “I want cities to be a lot more self-governing than they are … but cities are not England. England is also all the market towns, the smaller cities, the shire districts, the rural communities, the villages.”

Trickett’s own constituency includes 23 villages. “I moved 12 miles from Leeds to where I represent now and it’s an entirely different community,” he says. “There’s lots of resentment in areas outside the big cities about the devolution agenda.”

So what does he want instead? This is not something Trickett is willing to dictate from on high; instead, he has just announced a constitutional convention. He wants citizens in every village, town and church hall across the country to have conversations about how local places should be governed. Trickett’s vision for a more equal Britain is “a vision from below”, with local people calling the shots.

The convention will be a fairly blank page, he says, with more to be announced in coming weeks, but it is likely to include a look at local political and governance structures, the council funding formula, and ways to increase the fiscal autonomy of local authorities.

It will take a while for his convention to pay dividends, and in the meantime, Trickett is at least pleased that local government is making itself heard.

His advice to council leaders, reluctantly given, is to “do what is in the best interests of your communities”. He says he will support councils to get the best deal they can from the government. “But these deals that are being offered are flawed. Labour will try to come forward, if possible with other parties, with a route through to a more enduring solution for communities.”



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