Labour may not have won June’s general election, but there is one corner of government in which Corbynism already rules the roost.

Salford’s stridently left-wing mayor Paul Dennett, voted into office 18 months ago, is not in opposition but in power: overseeing a budget of £200m, thousands of employees and the kind of compromises and headaches that come with being decision-maker rather than protester.

But despite the difficulties brought to bear on local government in northern cities - not least the endless cuts - Dennett is determined to pursue a strongly socialist agenda.

His right-hand man Charlie Winstanley is a Momentum organiser, while the area’s MP Rebecca Long-Bailey is one of Corbyn’s closest allies, helping paint the city an even darker red than it was already.

He is comfortable with calling himself ‘interventionist’. He questions the role of the market, believes the city centre’s development boom is merely building unaffordable tower blocks and wants to stop gentrification displacing the poor.

And he thinks he has found a way round government restrictions to build social housing for years to come.

So could Salford be the forerunner of the Corbyn state?

The thread running through all Dennett’s rhetoric - and his emerging policies - is about taming market forces. Capitalism has not delivered what it was supposed to, he believes, so if the government won’t step in, the town hall will.

“I think one of the main things about my approach to local government is yes, the role of the state is to facilitate growth, but I’m quite convinced that where we are economically at the moment, the market won’t deliver,” he says. “That facilitator role needs to change.

“The state needs to become a lot more interventionist and that’s what we often refer to here as sensible socialism. We need more of that, where local authorities can spend the profits and the wealth created.”

Greater Manchester’s decision long ago to buy up Manchester Airport - funnelling the profits into town hall budgets - is, he points out, a good example of where this kind of ‘municipal capitalism’ has worked already.

But he believes Salford must go further than that, adopting a fresh approach. And nowhere is that more the case than in regeneration and housing development.

He is critical of the boom creating thousands of homes across Manchester city centre and Salford, believing they are ‘unaffordable to people who live, work and play here’.

This is in sharp contrast to Manchester council’s view, which insists the new apartments are modern ‘worker’s housing’, that they are affordable and that they meet a growing demand.

But Dennett believes leaving the market to its own devices will only lead to soaring prices.

“Investment has been actively sought by going abroad to sell Greater Manchester, so there’s been a lot of work done that pre-dates my appointment and has attracted money - and inevitably that results in these unaffordable tower blocks,” he says, pointing out investors are eyeing up returns of 6pc or even 8pc a year.

“If you want to transition to a highly-skilled, highly-paid economy in Greater Manchester, then you will need to do some degree of that kind of housing.

“So there is a tension between where you want to be and the issues of social justice I’m interested in. But for me, the issue is balance. And if I’m honest I don’t think we have the balance right. Housing costs are spiralling.”

However national planning policy - and the market - doesn’t make it easy to stop that, admits Dennett. So is Salford really any different to Manchester, given that thousands of market-rate apartments are also going up on Dennett’s side of the Irwell?

Yes, he insists. Salford works particularly hard to squeeze affordable housing contributions out of developers, he points out, raking in £6.5m last year as against Manchester’s £1.5m.

“If you compare Salford with Manchester, clearly our negotiation skills as a council are an awful lot stronger in getting that money out of developers,” he says.

“So that’s an example of a difference. We try really hard to get affordable housing into those developments.

“Developers will say they can’t do it because it will make their projects unviable, which means we have to constantly pursue them through open book accounting and try to claw back money.

“I’m not convinced that just by increasing housing supply the prices then necessarily come down.

“‘Brand Manchester’ has been successful in attracting foreign investment and promoting itself to government capital and we have got to give the city credit for that.

“We have been a beneficiary of that. However I believe Salford’s model is slightly different.”

In Greengate and New Bailey the council has also underwritten the leases of new commercial tower blocks, with the intention of bringing in rents and business rates to redistribute.

Similarly around Chapel Street Dennett talks about ‘changing the direction of travel of regeneration’, including finding ways to keep and attract the area’s flourishing creative community, keeping rents down for those ‘who’ve really suffered from gentrification over the years, constantly being displaced’.

While artistic neighbourhoods such as the Northern Quarter have become unaffordable to many of their original residents over time, he wants to intervene to stop that happening.

In partnership with Salford University and others the council is looking to provide subsidised workspace, potentially using council-owned property on the Regent trading estate, as well as housing. The partnership has launched a commission looking at fairer rents.

Dennett’s belief in subsidised housing extends further, however.

Last year he announced plans for a major push on new social housing, which Salford believes to be unique.

To begin with, £2m from its affordable housing contributions pot has been placed into a development company called Derive - named after a French Marxist approach to urban planning - in order to kickstart building.

Salford intends to then create a joint venture with a social housing provider, put in the land, waive planning costs and start building homes with social housing-level rents that won’t fall under the government’s Right to Buy policy. It may even, in the future, set up its own construction company if it finds that to be cheaper.

Three sites are already being looked at, capable of providing around 100 homes, but the key goal for Dennett is to make the vehicle sustainable in the long term.

He says some market-value housing will be needed in order to cross-subsidise the project, along with more money from affordable housing contributions, and that it has legs as a project.

Some have questioned whether that financial model really stacks up, however, including opposition members on Salford council.

Even fellow Labour politicians have dismissed it. In next-door Manchester, council leaders do not believe it will lead to very many homes, while Manchester Central MP Lucy Powell has suggested it is merely ‘rhetoric’.

Dennett seems baffled by such criticisms. While the project probably won’t clear the city’s 7,000 social housing waiting list, he does intend it to build hundreds or potentially even thousands of homes.

“It’s going to build houses, there’s no doubt about it,” he says.

“I find it bizarre people who make those kind of comments. I don’t get up and say something unless it’s going to get done.

“Personal integrity is important to me and I didn’t get into politics just to make grand speeches.”

While he admits selling council land for market-rate apartments would make the town hall more, he believes his approach is the right thing to do.

“It will mean the local authority taking a financial hit because it won’t be built for unaffordable housing, so there won’t be massive land receipts or business rates income. It’s about a balanced approach rather than just looking at the bottom line.

“That’s easier said than done, especially in a context of austerity, but fundamentally is it the right thing to do for the people of Salford - and yes, I think it is. The market won’t deliver affordable housing.”

Other Labour councils across the region will point to their own examples of left-wing activity in the face of government austerity, but Salford is notable for several reasons - not least because in Greater Manchester at least, Dennett is so far the only unashamedly Corbynite leader, particularly happy to be seen as actively challenging the market.

It is early days and the test will be whether in few years’ time, Salford’s poorer residents have shared more of the city’s economic benefits than at present, or indeed any more so than people living anywhere else.

But Dennett believes that from his corner of the urban north he is foreshadowing what will eventually be driven from a Labour administration in Westminster.

“Historically government have thought they can shrink the state and the market will step up - and that clearly hasn’t happened,” he says.

“It’s about being more interventionist. This is, as far as I’m concerned, a blueprint for Labour in government, in local government.”

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