Steve Reed finds comfort with Michael Gove – but Lambeth ghosts haunt his talk of “power to the people”

It’s not every day you see Streatham and Croydon North MP Steve Reed relaxed and smiling opposite Michael Gove.

Yet that was the scene in a recent Spectator interview, with Reed – now Starmer’s Housing Minister – talking through his big new plans for communities and housing with the ex-Tory Minister turned editor of the right-wing rag.

What stood out wasn’t just Reed’s ease in explaining his vision to a right-wing audience, but his choice of words. “Power has to be taken, not given,” he declared.

Before the more radical members of Streatham CLP get carried away, this wasn’t a call for revolution.

Reed was referring to Labour’s Pride in Place scheme: a £660m programme offering 330 communities – mainly in Labour seats under threat from Reform – the promise of £2m each over the next decade to “take back” their high streets.

But the slogan carries baggage back here in Lambeth. Reed used to trot it out regularly as Leader of Lambeth Council during the so-called Co-operative Council era – a failed experiment that promised residents real power but delivered the opposite.

Ask tenants at Cressingham Gardens estate. When they developed their own People’s Plan for regeneration, they weren’t even granted a hearing. Reed’s administration locked residents out at every stage.

Co-operation? Forget it. As Brixton Buzz reported back in 2016, Lambeth wasn’t even interested in listening.

So when Reed repeats his mantra today, the obvious question is: what’s different this time? Will communities actually be allowed to take power, or is this Pride in Place another rebrand of the old top-down model?

Michael Gove, of all people, will know the answer. As Secretary of State, he wrote three times to Lambeth, exposing catastrophic housing maladministration under Reed’s old council. If anyone is across Lambeth’s failures, it’s Reed’s new right-wing pal.

Reed also used the Spectator platform to sing the praises of Labour Mayor Sadiq Khan and the work of London’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) – fronted by Reed’s old Lambeth colleague Lib Peck.

Under Peck, the VRU has scaled prevention programmes and secured significant funding. There have been reductions in some high-harm offences that coincide with the VRU’s work.

But independent evaluators are cautious: overlapping funding streams, policing activity, and changes in data recording mean it’s impossible to prove the VRU alone caused the falls.

The initiatives look promising, but stronger evaluation is still needed before declaring it a success story.

Then came Reed’s proudest boast: the Vauxhall, Nine Elms, Battersea (VNEB) development. Reed co-chaired the board with then-Wandsworth Tory leader Sir Edward Lister, and in the interview he claimed 20,000 new homes were delivered under his watch.

The numbers tell a different story. The scheme originally promised 16,000 – 20,000 homes, half a million square metres of commercial space, and 27,000 jobs.

But as of April 2024, only 6,685 homes had actually been completed, with another 4,960 still under construction and 462 awaiting planning consent.

Affordable housing provision remains pitiful: just 560 of 3,444 homes at Battersea Power Station are designated as affordable. And many of the luxury flats stand empty, sold to overseas investors rather than local Londoners.

Reed calls Vauxhall “a remarkable place.” But anyone who walks through the sterile glass towers can see the lack of community. It’s a monument to speculative development, not neighbourhood renewal.

And that’s the contradiction at the heart of Reed’s new Housing Minister persona. He tells Gove and the Spectator that power must be taken.

But Lambeth residents who lived under his leadership know all too well that power was neither taken nor given. It was blocked, hoarded, and signed off behind closed doors.

If Reed wants to convince communities across the country that this time will be different, he’ll have to prove it in practice.

Otherwise, his cosy chats with Gove will look like little more than history repeating itself – with the same old power stitched up by the same old Steve.