Labour’s response on dealing with the economics of Covid-19 has been rather insipid to date. Beyond criticising the Chancellor for a one-size-fits-all approach there’s no big new ideas coming from Anneliese Dodds. One would hope she would be consulting widely at this time, but her office responded with the predictable “thank you but Anneliese can only respond to constituents.”
It’s depressing that these isn’t more capacity, within the offices of people with such important constitutional positions, to engage with suggestions from the wider public. There’s probably never been a time when the population has been so well educated an informed as now, and democracy should be about us all coming together to problem-solve. There was some talk of setting up people’s assemblies, around the time of the Brexit impasse, and it is a great shame that these weren’t pioneered. Maybe their time will come.