huffingtonpost - 29 days ago

Chris Hinchliff believes Labour must give power back to communities in order to combat Nigel Farage (above) and his rise in the opinion polls.Last week I voted against Nigel Farage’s attempt to tear Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights. To me it exposed the emptiness of Reform UK’s offering to the British people.Farage feeds off the sense of powerless that runs through E but his is a cold politics providing only someone to blame, not real agency over our lives or the urgent action to raise living standards people are so rightly demanding.Part of the solution, to me, is obvious – Labour, the genuine inheritors of the traditions of mass politics in this country, must champion giving power back to the people.  Labour won’t win back those tempted by Reform with indignation and factual corrections – no matter how egregious Farage’s lies I’m campaigning for a Charter for Community Rights to give ordinary people a real say in shaping the places they live. Since becoming an MP last year, a common thread draws together what might appear to be disparate grievances that so many of my constituents have shared with me. Whether its cuts to bus routes, unaffordable housing, trashed green spaces or councils’ local plans being undermined: it so often comes down to how wealth translates to power in our society.It’s just too easy for powerful corporations to ride roughshod over what local people want and far too often residents are treated as an irritant by those who “know best”.The results are as predictable as they are miserable, high streets dotted with bookies but missing basics like post offices, and lifeless bolt-on estates dominating towns and villages because developer profiteering wins over the authentic aspirations of local people for the place they call home. The Charter would enshrine into law the right of residents to have a say, and challenge local decisions.It sets out basic principles for happy, healthy lives, like the right to a decent home and a clean environment, as well as the right to roam our countryside, swim in our rivers, grow food, and play. The idea of towns, cities, and villages built for people to flourish, not just survive, might make housing developers shudder, but it would set anew bar for community life in modern England. It is time to replace mere ambition with a higher virtue – hope With new towns and rapid housebuilding promised by this government, we should consign the grey commuter dormitories of the recent past to history –instead building thriving communal spaces that bring us together, wide green parks where children play, and places where change is done with people, not to them. I know there is no single policy or shortcut to this future, but this Charter is a framework to link together a range of changes so that renewal and empowerment runs through everything we do.It is time to replace mere ambition with a higher virtue – hope. The society we live in is shaped by the political system that governs it, and the powerlessness people feel is part of what breeds the cynicism and malaise running through our country today.We’ve got to trust local voices to understand what’s best for their communities, rather than leaving those decisions to top-down diktat or vested interests concerned only with profit. In doing so, we give people a greater stake in the towns and villages that shape their lives. Labour won’t win back those tempted by Reform with indignation and factual corrections – no matter how egregious Farage’s lies. We must expose and beat their shallow offering with one of genuine empowerment. The Charter for Community Rights would give people real agency over the places they live, while Reform would hand more power to the same vested interests tearing them apart – like giving fossil fuel giants the green light to rip up our countryside with fracking that is despised by local communities. Why? To make the rich richer. Our politics too often narrows itself to economic arguments. Of course, I want a fairer settlement that ends poverty and cuts inequality at the next Budget, but to win back trust and to stop Farage we must embrace both halves of our historic Labour mission: a fundamental and irreversible shift in the balance of wealth, and of power too.Related...Reform UK In Chaos After Losing One In Six Members On Flagship CouncilWomen s Representation In Parliament Could Drop To Just 1 In 4 If Reform Win Next ElectionDavid Lammy Says Reform UK MP s Racist Take On TV Ads Belong In The Dark Ages

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