SINCE Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana announced their intention to launch a new political party, there has been an outpouring of enthusiasm.

It is perhaps not a surprise. When Corbyn was leader of the Labour Party, membership climbed to over half a million — unheard of in British politics. It offered hope and a break from the austerity consensus among our political class.

This is a consensus that is now very much back in operation with the government’s refusal to so far budge on rescinding the two-child benefit cap, taking the previously unthinkable step of abolishing the universal Winter Fuel Allowance, and assaulting disabled people’s entitlement.

At a local level, it is not representing our local communities or doing our duty as local councillors to simply manage central government funding cuts in the least-worst way, and to make things a bit better “around the edges” in an unfolding catastrophe.

In Haringey, north London, we have had to deal with a turncoat Labour council. Many current councillors, including those now in leadership positions, when seeking selection, were avid campaigners against the proposed privatisation of the council’s housing stock and other property holdings. Once elected, they voted to depose the leftist leader of the council and have become a most managerial Starmerist council.

This is, of course, happening alongside the acquiescence in, rather than opposition to, the horror in Palestine and the ceding of ground to Reform UK and racism on those seeking refuge. 

Haringey Council, recently awarded the “rebel borough” accolade, is anything but “rebel.” Earlier this year, the Independent Socialist councillors tabled a motion to stop the council’s pension and other funds from being invested in corporations complicit in the genocide in Gaza.

The Labour mayor ejected me, the mover, from the chamber, and then allowed a Labour amendment that tore the guts out of the original Independent Group’s motion.

Earlier this year, the Local Government Association stated that local government was on course to have a funding shortfall of £8 billion by 2028-29.

Recent BBC research found there had been an increase in the number of councils selling assets or taking short-term loans to pay for day-to-day service provision, with £2.9 billion public assets sold over the past two years (in addition to losses incurred by losing social homes under right to buy).

For absolutely every cut made and wrong policy choice taken nationally, the consequences run uniquely through local government. Yet, it also means that local government is uniquely placed to deliver in a way that breaks us out of the doom spiral we are threatened with. 

We know, and it is well documented, that loneliness, social isolation and poor mental health are running high in Britain; Britain does not just have an ageing population — it has a population that is sicker and in poorer physical, as well as mental, health than many of its counterpart countries.

We know that our housing stock is older, in a worse state and by-and-large without proper insulation and too weakly regulated for renters.

We know that poverty, both relative and absolute, is growing — as is economic inequality — and that this is linked to a whole host of worse social outcomes and impacts.

We know that we need to regenerate nature and wildlife, improve our air quality and adapt our local communities, towns and cities to deal with extreme weather and meet the scale of the climate crisis. 

Library spending has halved; community centres and public halls spending has slumped by 39 per cent, and parks and open spaces by a third. Three-quarters of councils have cut housing provision.

The less glamorous — but just as crucial to how our local areas feel and look and reflect whether we take pride or feel neglected — are the cuts to pest control, street cleaning and refuse and waste collection. Statutory spending on homelessness has doubled.

Haringey Council has sought to bamboozle the public with its phoney consultation on the library service. Countless graphs on footfall and time of use have been produced to cover the fact that the library service was being cut.

Only the Independent Socialist councillors, taking advice from a Unison library expert, have opposed the cuts, root and branch.

The arrival of Your Party promises a vision and a commitment to local government that goes beyond meeting statutory duties and recognises councils are central to not just meeting the challenges we face or picking up the pieces, but improving people’s lives.

Community spaces, parks, libraries and public halls and spaces that are accessible and freely available for groups and people to meet and organise are needed for local democracy and participation to flourish, as well as for other activities tackling the isolation and loneliness many experience. To green our towns and cities, and build homes, local councils need land and funding, and an end to right to buy.

Public transport, and more walking and cycling, means greater power for local and regional government — including the power to run bus routes, and to keep and extend free bus travel wherever possible, for example, to the unemployed as well as older and younger people. 

The insourcing of services enables councils to ensure they are accessible and affordable to local communities and maximised for social and climate benefit, not profit. It should be the norm.

Rebuilding our lost youth services, improving housing quality and working with other local services wherever possible to improve lives — examples such as providing free school meals stand out — all need an invigorated local government with funding and powers. And not just a spoken or paper commitment, but a real political will and leadership to make it happen.

The launch of Your Party presents an opportunity that must be grasped on doing things differently. There is a wellspring of anger and frustration about the deep erosion of our public services, the spiralling poverty we all see and feel around us, and repulsion at how inhumane positions on war, asylum-seekers and denial about the future of our climate have bled into the political mainstream.

Local government reorganisation, including the collapsing of district and county councils into single organisations, will mean a smaller number of councillors with larger constituencies, the reverse of what’s needed.

With the undemocratic role of Labour Party regional offices in candidate selection (see what happened in Brent earlier this month), we can only imagine how dreadful the new councils will be. Your Party can be a force for good in only supporting reform that really has the backing of the people.

There is a desperate need for a political force in this country that challenges what’s happening.

We need to change the direction of the national political discourse away from a squalid search for who to attack next, whether that is benefit claimants or migrants and refugees, and how deeply to cut our public services, all set to a drumbeat of greater military spending for wars. It is an opportunity that must be seized for the benefit of all of us.

Lotte Collett is an Independent Socialist councillor on Haringey Council in north London. She was arrested for holding a placard at the Defend Our Juries/Palestine Action protest in Parliament Square on September 6. This evening, Wednesday September 17, Haringey Independent Socialist councillors are hosting a sold-out Your Party meeting in Wood Green with Sultana MP as the keynote speaker.