A Route Map for Change

It has been an open secret that the person behind this website is erstwhile councillor, Clive Furness. Over the past 24 months, he has been collaborating with the former mayor, Robin Wales on a separate project.

The fruits of their labours is the book, Left, Right, Wrong.

“Public services are in crisis. NHS backlogs, police forces in disarray and a housing crisis growing ever worse. Whole areas of our national infrastructure are in a mess including energy, water and rail. 

“In this book authors Sir Robin Wales and Clive Furness demonstrate how these issues are linked and what can be done to solve them. Books explaining what is wrong and what is to be done are ten a penny. What makes this book different is that the authors implemented their thinking in the real world. They reflect on the current frustration with public service bureaucracy and its failure to deliver as it should and demonstrate, with evidence and examples, what needs to be done to create public services which deliver on their original aspiration.

“They take readers on a rollercoaster journey through two successful decades in charge of one of Britain’s most deprived councils – highlighting how they changed the face of east London by overhauling political and social cultures and helping, in the process, to deliver London’s 2012 Olympic Games. 

“Part autobiographical account of policy successes, part ode to the forgotten days of social democracy, and part critique of the Left’s current obsession with ‘woke’ culture, the authors draw on their vast experience and, with engaging humour, deliver 2023’s most important assessment of how the Labour movement can shake-off its self-imposed shackles.”

Reasons to buy this book.

• To make the authors rich. Buy two! Buy three, keep one as a spare Christmas present, just in case.

• You might be mentioned in it and can make your fortune by suing the authors.

• It provides a record of Newham government for the period from 1995-2018 when Newham moved from the bottom of almost every indicator to the top quartile

• It gives a practical alternative to the current obsession with political fashion and identity politics

• It demonstrates how politics can improve the lives of even the poorest populations

• It’s a jolly good read!

It can be pre-ordered from the publisher, and from Waterstones, WHSmith and Amazon.

The authors in earlier days.