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The success we have had in our region goes to show what progressive strategies can achieve outside of the grind of the two-party race, writes North of Tyne Mayor JAMIE DRISCOLL

“I’VE donated to your campaign,” an older gentleman told me in the street just this weekend. “I want the Tories out, but I’m not that hopeful Labour will change anything.” I get stopped in the cinema, at a cafe, on the Metro, at the shops. Every time I go out I hear the same thing.
I get the logic that if Labour apes the Conservatives, Tories can’t attack Labour policies. The Tories are so unpopular, in a two-party system, Labour will win by default — and then what?
Austerity failed. Even the IMF acknowledges that. Everything suggests the Labour leadership is serious about pursuing a neoliberal economic policy.
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