| 8 mins read
SUMMARY
- Labour has struggled to articulate a hopeful narrative of Britain. To take on Reform it must boost social cohesion by rebuilding Britain’s moral and civic foundations and redefining a good society.
- Britain has lost over three-quarters of its informal meeting spaces since 1980. “Closures of pubs, piers and parks are pushing people into isolation, more time spent online, and towards the far right” according to the IPPR.
- Programmes addressing isolation and promoting cross-community engagement exist, yet their reach is inconsistent.
- Labour’s Pride in Place, giving £5bn to communities to create thriving local places, is a good start. But Labour must also connect local efforts to a national story of renewal.
Since the ascendancy of New Labour in 1997, progressive politics in Britain has rested on the assumption that economic growth would deliver the good society. However, with growth no longer reliable or sustainable, it is time to rethink what underpins a good society. This is all the more necessary given the doom and gloom of the current, and besieged, Labour government, who have thus far struggled to articulate a positive or hopeful narrative of Britain; instead beholden to a declinist rhetoric consisting of economic woe and fractured communities which has enabled the populist right to thrive.
If Labour wish to rebuild its support, and take on Reform, then it should focus on rebuilding the moral and civic foundations from which cohesion arise. Initiatives such as Labour’s Pride in Place are, actually, a good start. By empowering communities to take ownership of local spaces with a substantive level of financial backing, government can hope to restore civic life in a meaningful way.
However, it should also go one step further. Local efforts should be presented by the current government as part of the story of us; as examples of the renewal and the rebinding of our national community. By connecting the local and the national together, Labour can more confidently tell a positive story that is, perhaps, capable of challenging Reform’s ascendancy.
Why have so many community spaces closed in Britain?
It is easy to look at modern Britain and be pessimistic. Widespread concerns about public services, inequality, and the cost-of-living fuel frustration and trust in decision-makers to change things remains low. Between 2014 and 2024, the British Election Study showed that the proportion of people with low to no trust in MPs rose from 54% to 76%. Similarly, only a measly 14% of respondents in 2025 said they trusted politicians. And locally, many people are unable to participate in community life. Britain has lost over three-quarters of its informal meeting spaces since 1980—pubs, youth clubs, working men’s clubs, and libraries. This vacuum of trust and recurrent local concerns is fertile ground for populist politics, which we are now so familiar with. Marches on the streets of London, a campaign to put an England flag on every roundabout (or mini-roundabout), and a rising tide of anti-migrant rhetoric do nothing to make us feel we can address such challenges collectively, as one community; one nation; one union.
And while many communities are not inert—local football clubs, youth centres, places of worship, and food banks continue to anchor social life as best they can, providing tangible spaces in which people can find recognition, solidarity, and agency—effective social cohesion work remains patchy. Programmes addressing isolation and promoting cross-community engagement exist, yet their reach is inconsistent, often concentrated in areas that have experienced recent episodes of violence, like Southport. These efforts include the reopening of lost amenities, in Southport this being the pier which closed in 2022, but which is being reopened after receiving £20m of national government funding. Here, interventions are stitching back together the fabric of the community, but are also reactive because our institutions, including local and national government, so tasked with fostering cohesion, often have lacked the confidence or resources to tell positive stories about local resilience or to engage in difficult dialogue about persistent social ills.
In contrast, the IPPR underline the need for a proactive approach, largely because the “closure of pubs, piers and parks are pushing people into isolation, more time spent online, and towards the far right”. Spaces are then important for interaction, both in terms of encouraging mixing within communities, as well as providing an area in which fringe divisive views can be challenged before they are normalised, as so often happens in online echo chambers. In other words, community space is important for deradicalisation and social mixing.
What is Labour’s Pride In Place Programme?
Initiatives such as the Pride In Place programme have finally begun to address the resource gap which has meant so many of these spaces have closed, to the tune of a £5bn funding boost. Through Pride In Place, the government hopes that the creation of neighbourhood boards will empower residents to make decisions regarding their local area, expand funding for existing spaces, and open new ones, with a view to fostering trust and strengthening connections across class, race, and generation. As British Future report, when local people are given authority to decide how their communities are structured and resourced, they develop a sense of ownership that counters alienation and resentment. So, in a sense, Pride in Place looks like it can deliver on the creation of the good society by restoring agency to communities; where substantive funding supports a civic engagement that is localised and rooted in meaningful spaces and relationships; as a counter to the online spaces which have so facilitated the far-right.
Yet while initiatives like Pride In Place are an important step, they are no magic bullet. Local investment and empowerment can restore agency, strengthen civic bonds, and demonstrate what a cohesive community looks like at the micro level, but they cannot, on their own, resolve the broader anxieties facing Britain today. Trust in politicians remains perilously low, and people still want to see national government has their back; that they are not simply given resources and expected to do everything themselves. To sustain and amplify these local efforts, national government must more confidently articulate a story of renewal that resonates with citizens’ experiences.
By building on the local achievements which are sure to come from Pride In Place, and bringing them into the national light—celebrating and connecting them to a shared vision of a resilient, inclusive Britain—government can help transform these otherwise isolated pockets of civic renewal into a hopeful narrative for the country as a whole. With populism and declinism a constant threat, such a rooted, hopeful vision for the future may be what a struggling Labour government needs to rejuvenate itself before the next election.
