More than a century ago, in 1924, Britain got its first Labour government. It was a beleaguered administration that lasted barely nine months. Yet, in that flicker of power, it achieved something enduring: the 1924 Housing Act, championed by the socialist Glasgow Shettleston MP John Wheatley. Building on his experience as a councillor, Wheatley’s legislation unleashed a massive expansion of municipal housing for the working class – a testament to what empowered and ambitious local government could deliver.

Fast forward a hundred years, and another beleaguered Labour administration is in trouble. This time, the man tasked with offering a lifeline is Andy Burnham, whose remedy is strikingly familiar: a large-scale council house building programme, wrapped inside what he calls “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen.”

Andy Burnham’s rhetoric isn’t short on ambition.

That’s not a bad thing – a deficit of vision is, after all, at least partly responsible for the demise of Keir Starmer’s government.

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Burnham, by contrast, is speaking directly to everyday anxieties. Alongside housing, he has correctly diagnosed that the rising cost of essentials is no accident. Energy, buses, social care, and – in England – water have been privatised and sold off to financial interests. That argument, so central to the UK’s structural decay, has been voiced only fleetingly by national politicians in recent years. It is refreshing, too, to hear a leading UK........

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