Manchester should be returning its municipal roots and leading the country in a new drive towards localism and devolution.
That’s according to Tristram Hunt MP, historian and former Shadow Education Secretary speaking last night at the People’s History Museum at an event organized by Centre for Cities.

“Manchester has always been a city of the future at the cutting edge of science and innovation, now we stand on the cusp of a new generation of progressive leaders taking control of their own destiny.” He told the audience.

Hunt, whose latest book, Ten Cities that made an Empire, talked of Manchester’s resurgence as the centre of a new industrial revolution and the rise of the modern city while the path to devolved government he says will embrace progressive politics, while mining the socialist ethic of the past, in the urban centre such as Manchester.

Along with Glasgow and Birmingham, Manchester with its Mechanics Institutes, it’s Athenaeum and its Friendly Societies exercised their influence so greatly over the community, so much so that Engels by the 1850’s was disappointed that the proletarian revolution he was hoping for was never going to happen in Manchester.
The challenge now for municipal socialism is that today, local politics has been run down to the point that many services  have been handed either to central government or to the private sector.

When George Osbourne announced the first Manchester deal, he says Labour missed the boat and slipped back into the centralist message, the time for equivocation is over he adds, and instead get ahead of the Tory message, the fight for a better world begins in your own back yard.

Stronger growth, less regional inequality and more inclusive growth, says the OECD comes from decentralisation. Hunt believes that the deals should go further than just the main cities, the problems of the smaller towns, often quite different to those of cities could benefit much more.

There are he believes three stages to this, the firstfiscal autonomy, local retention of more taxes, the imposition tourist levies, more fiscal institutions that know how to deal with local issues, rather like the German system which links municipal banking to local issues.

Secondly public sector reform, decentralization offers the ability to deliver public services much better than the central state.Manchester is moving that way with its devolved health and legal systems.Labour he says should not simply be fighting local authority cuts and instead look for future solutions, and redesign services in education and social care.

The third issue is ownership.Hunt points out that across the world, cities are taking control of resources, water and sanitation, power and broadband services.Labour should draw its own proud history when it comes to the provision of municipal services, providing cheaper and more efficient services.

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