A report out over the weekend is calling for a reversal of 40-years of privatization with a long-term plan to take over failing utilities, issuing “bonds for shares” and forming state competitors.
Mainstream a Burnham backing Labour think tank in their report say Britain faces a compounding crisis – of living costs, economic performance, and public finances – that grinds on without resolution.
The causes are multiple, but running through them all is a key driver of our failure to build at scale and guarantee affordability: the privatisation of essential services and systematic transfer and loss of public control of life’s non-negotiables.
Their report The Productive State outlines a way to scale up Andy Burnham’s Manchesterism nationally and offers a starting point for creating the institutional basis for a more inclusive, resilient and democratic society, where belonging is built through the things we experience in common rather than divided by what we can afford.
Andy Burnham’s Greater Manchester programme — the Bee Network, expanded council housing, the Good Growth Fund has begun to
show what the logic of public control produces in practice they say including lower
fares, more routes, restored connectivity to communities the market
Manchesterism they add recognises public control of essentials is central to
a successful affordability agenda and represents fiscal prudence in
action.
The teportcscales that logic nationally: energy and water under national public corporations, housing and transport at
city-region scale, care and local services through municipal providers
