I had an interesting few weeks at the end of the summer. As well as working on my research, beginning to build a research design and methodology for the thesis, I was nominated to stand in a council by-election. It involved lots of doorstepping, lots of speaking to actual people, lots of conversations with angry people… a taste of the national mood right now. 

Away from the psephology, the experience brought to light a lot of the disconnect happening between people and place and perceptions about community and the position, and state, of governance. So much is happening to create an atmosphere of discontent there’s enough to write several books on it, let alone come to a succinct and workable network of policy solutions to deal with the unprecedented polycrysis we face right now. Having spent a few weeks reflecting on what happened, the result and the sense of discord which undoubtedly exists right now, I think so much of the discontent is rooted in the failure and collapse of the ecosystems built by strong and functioning foundational economies.

People are angry at the decay they see. At the litter on the streets. At the encroachment of new housing. At the creeping marketisation of public spaces. At what they feel are diminishing returns on the taxes they pay. Some direct their anger at immigrants, others at the political class, many more direct their ire towards local government. A lot vent at all and everything.

In a ward of very mixed demographics in the by-election I took part in, a sense of anger was more palpably felt in prosperous neighbourhoods than what might be termed working class in the traditional idea. These people’s precarity was being lived beyond the financial (though tensions exist here, the middle classes are of course hit and affected by cost of living crises) into the realms of the imagined, where perceptions of policy making and of immigration begin to influence how people think about the place they live and what it feels like to be from there.

Community cohesion

Evidence of schisms and disquiet exists beyond the anecdotal. The Wellbeing of Wales 2025 report suggests something is happening to community cohesiveness. Evidently, it has changed enough for the chief statistician, Stephanie Howarth to highlight as being a concern. Writing in the report’s forward, she says:

 [Our] collective perception of place and community has worsened. After a temporary lift during the pandemic, indicators related to community cohesion have largely returned to pre-pandemic levels. This pattern is also evident in other areas, such as adult sport participation, where improvements seen during the pandemic have diminished and are now more in line with trends observed before 2020.

Community cohesion might be easily contested as a concept, but it is clearly an idea policymakers perceive as being identifiable, definable, important to Wales’s nationhood and a core component in the Well-being of Future Generations Act (2015), which has become an engine for policy development in Wales in the decade since its inception. How can we regrasp the cohesiveness that was one of the few positives to emerge from the pandemic? What does this data tell us about the relationship between state and citizen? Can cohesiveness be strengthened, embedded, developed, improved, by intervention? Do we have the institutional memory, or even the collective desire, to make that happen?

As I’ve already alluded to, I think many of the answers here can be found by strengthening, investing in and opening up the foundational economy and ensuring residents have equal access to the things that can set them free as individuals. That means investing in the parts of the economy that aren’t that glamorous, but which can establish prosperous communities using policy levers in an innovative and dynamic way.

Social solidarities

I’ll use the NHS as an example. A pertinent report by NHS Providers in England suggests devolving hospital services into town centres. There’s a couple of wins from doing this kind of thing: firstly, it’s the public sector putting critical infrastructure into accessible places; secondly, it’s regenerative in a time when urban decay feels so ubiquitous; thirdly, it supports delivery of services to patients and improves both well-being and value. Community, in many respects, is a vibes-based thing. In an era when complaining is so much easier than acting, these health initiatives that are happening in England illustrate just how effective the state can be in rebuilding foundational economies, strengthening social solidarities, and providing the base upon which residents can feel value in their tax bucks and feel valued as citizens.

There is a pressing need to renetwork the solidarities which have bound people together in the past and built the cohesion that appears to be in decline. That means through democracies (in a meaning beyond conventional electoral institutions); through ownership and stake; through connectedness to the services people need and use; and through innovations from all elements in our economy (like the third sector, the state, and yes, the private too).

Residents have a right to be angry. They also have a responsibility. But so does capital and labour and everything in between and beyond.