On both sides of the Atlantic, the COVID-19 crisis poses a double challenge. Beyond the terrifying public health emergency, the vitally necessary immediate response has been an economic shutdown of unprecedented proportions. But that is only the beginning of our difficulties. When the medical emergency passes, we will emerge into a shattered economic landscape. The challenge of restarting—in some sectors, even rebuilding—a severely stressed economy will remain, with the inequalities of wealth, power, and control we faced beforehand now amplified many times over. 

For advocates of systemic transformation to a more just and sustainable economy, the occasion demands bold and strategic ambition, grounded in an honest assessment of prior convictions and assumptions. Today, we are excited to release, in partnership with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), a new white paper—“Owning the Future”—that begins to chart this course. Together with our CLES coauthors Jonty Leibowitz and Neil McInroy, we outline a COVID-19 economic recovery plan capable of ushering in a new era of community wealth building in the United Kingdom.

In the paper, we counterpose this good outcome—in which we seize our last best opportunity to build a more local, generative, social and democratic economic system—to the bad and ugly ones that wait in the wings if we fail to act transformatively. The bad outcome is a rerun of the kinds of responses we saw in the aftermath of the Great Financial Crisis of 2007-08, reinstalling globalised neoliberal corporate capitalism, with bailouts for the banks and the corporate sector, and precious little for the rest of us, excepting another more brutal round of belt-tightening austerity. But beyond the bad there is also the ugly—a full-on “shock doctrine” disaster response, combining a new state authoritarianism with ongoing uncontrolled corporate capitalism, shredding already tattered commitments to tolerance, inclusion, and social welfare.

The COVID-19 pandemic could become a moment of crystallisation, with communities and governments working together to build a genuinely inclusive economy. But to do so, we need ambitious interventions, both at the national level and at the level of a new common sense, built upwards from community—and our joint paper outlines both. 

Nationally, we need: 

Buyouts, not bailouts: To avoid repeating the mistakes of the Great Financial Crisis, we need to consider national and local publicly-owned holding companies, designed to acquire and mothball failing businesses up until the point when they can be relaunched as part of the economic recovery.

A new green industrial strategy: We must replace the UK’s discredited industrial strategy with a Green New Deal, funded by a green stimulus recovery package.

A new social contract and welfare system: We must recognize that austerity was a mistake, and that we must restore the capacities and capabilities of the national and local state, while also expanding real community power.

These interventions could help set the stage for a new era of community wealth building in the UK, in which the extractive features of our economy are replaced with more democratic and sustainable ones. We lay out five key emergent steps towards this new economic common sense:

• Democratic and plural ownership of the economy—rethinking business support and economic development to advance democratic ownership of firms and a new era of municipal ownership.

• Financial power that works for local places—building a new national fiscal and devolution framework, as well as expanding community finance initiatives.

• Progressive procurement of goods and services—advancing real social value across all of public spending and commissioning, potentially through a social license to operate.

• Fair employment and just labour markets—with more forceful interventions in regional labour markets, especially in foundational economy sectors such as utilities, food, social and health care.

• Socially productive use of land and property—rolling back the enclosure of public land through municipal development vehicles, community land ownership and a democratic revolution in the planning system.