I see at end of article an anonymous person in a Council said that Corbyn would have to back up what he says with plans for funding.
Let's get this straight. It's not about funding.
The Myatts fields / Oval Quarter PFI regeneration scheme fiasco was brain child of Nu Labour thinking on "regeneration". I've posted up in detail on this in Myatts fields thread.
It is and it isn't about funding. Funding will be necessary, but a Corbyn govt
could push through primary legislation to allow local authorities to borrow either from the money markets, or from the Treasury for specific home-building projects. This isn't controversial, indeed it's how things were done before Thatcher.
Corbyn was signalling a break with the Nu Labour orthodoxy on housing ( and acceptance of neo liberalism). During the time Nu Labour were in power they regarded Council estates as the past. Gradually semi privatising them through ALMOs etc was the norm. Council housing itself was regarded as a failure. Lord Adonis and others in the Nu Labour camp argued for move from "monolithic " Council estates to "mixed" communities. A proxy for the social cleansing of working class communities. Nu Labour project was a middle class one. Tony Blair saw the changes brought on by Thatcher , "globalisation" and the worship of "entrepreneurialism" as permanent givens. What Blair offered was middle class politics with a human face. Unlike Thatcher. But in effect Blair was continuation of Thatcher. The working class were supposed to lump it as they had no were else to go.
And yet my estate, like every other local one I've visited, is more socially-mixed and tenure-mixed than anything developers have achieved, and are the richer for it. When scum like Adonis (was ever a man so mis-named?) talk about "mixed communities", what it boils down to at development level is mix of tenure, and - as shown repeatedly in "regeneration" schemes - that mix of tenure is usually loaded in favour of owner-occupation/private rental from owner and "affordable"/shared ownership, with social tenure being a minority pursuit, and often a stigmatised one, at that.
One of the sadly enduring legacies of new Labour is how taken-for-granted the working class
still are as a source of Labour votes. Here in Tulse Hill ward, the local electorate are quite
au fait with the Cressingham issue, and have been asking the ward councillors questions. They're being told "oh, we (meaning the ward councillors) have got that cancelled". This is a blatant lie, as a Cressingham resident questioned Lambeth's head of regeneration - Rachel Sharpe - about this earlier this month, and was told emphatically that the regeneration of Cressingham is proceeding.
The best thing Nu Labour did for Corbyn was making him go for another leadership election and assuming he would be finished off by May. They thought with him destroyed by May they could get back control of the party.
Unfortunately the way politics works Nu Labour are in control of Lambeth Labour. I think Cressingham Gardens are right to ask him to support them.
In Jeremy's favour when he was pictured with Bennet his position was not so secure. It is now for time being.
What Mr Corbyn needs to bear in mind is how many Lambeth Labour councillors voted no confidence in him, in that Progress-inspired poll in 2016.
What Corbyn did in last election was go over the heads of the po!itical e!ite in power in local Councils and Parliament. It is a strategy that worked.
The other thing that Corbyn and McDonnel have brought back is class. Nu Labour were hostile to class politics. Why in the end they alienated a good section of the core support. They thought the working class were finished.
So what I'm saying is that this is not about funding it's a sea change in the Labour party. Nu Labour Council like Lambeth are going to fight a rearguard battle to oppose the essence of what Corbyn represents. A return to class politics. There are irreconcilable ideological differences between the likes of Bennett and Corbyn.
Bennett is bureau-managerialist to the core. His thought processes revolve around "managing" politics. While managerialism has some utility, when applied to specifically-human problems such as housing, and the dynamics of demand, it's a reactive tool, not a proactive one, and becomes a hindrance. Corbyn at least realises that 3 decades of taking the base of party support for granted has caused a fracture in that support, and that focusing on "marginals" may be a good tactic, but it's a very poor strategy if it progressively - as it has done - erodes your core support elsewhere, and turns other seats into marginals.
