Former Labour advisor and Deputy Director of the think tank NLGN, Anna Turley launched a new blog last week – ProgLoc. Impressive early contributions and it’ll become a must-read for anyone interested in local government and localism on the left.
Check it out
“ProgLoc is a new independent blog dedicated to providing a voice for the centre-left in local government. It seeks to provide a platform for open debate and to become a hub for the best new thinking amongst progressives at local level.
The aims of ProgLoc are:
- To develop a forum for sharing new thinking and ideas on local public services and local government and to reclaim the localism agenda for the centre-left.
- To tackle reactionary approaches and negative briefing against local government and local public services; standing up for the sector when required but also developing challenging new ideas about how to deliver better local services.
- To support a new generation of local government leaders. So many great progressive politicians in the past have heralded from local government – we want to highlight good political leadership at local level.
- To unite progressive forces at the local level. We will examine what the barriers have been in creating progressive partnerships and look to ways of building new alliances between progressive forces.
- To enable a new approach to the relationship between the elected politician and the community. To help those on the left reinvigorate local democracy, and to ensure local government is focused on empowering people to bring about change in their community.
- To be a bridge and broker between local government progressives, the voluntary and community sector and trade unions to align rather than fragment or contradict campaigns.
- To support the creation of a new relationship between local government and the business sector. In the current climate it is vital that progressive councils form a new partnership with business to combine economic growth and social progress.”