“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.

Austerity stores problems for the future. True, Labour will have to deal with 14 years of Tory damage. But five more years of barely disguised austerity will increase health inequality, lower productivity, and compound destitution. Austerity is the enemy of inclusive wealth generation.

Keir Starmer’s latest plan is to improve skills training. Better qualified and skilled people can earn more money. There is a genuine shortage of skilled workers. It’s sound logic.

So sound, in fact, that my Combined Authority has been delivering this for the past three years. We got adult education devolved on August 1 2020.

Think chefs, welders, computer administrators, forklift and truck drivers. Whitehall previously administered it, delivering 22,000 training places a year. We reworked how the money was spent, spoke to training providers about adapting the way courses are delivered, listened to learners about the actual barriers stopping them from getting trained, such as transport, the school run, and Wi-Fi access, and got employers to sign up to giving people guaranteed interviews.

We now run free, flexible training courses so people can work around their existing work patterns or caring responsibilities. We’ve increased training from 22,000 to 33,000 people a year. For the same budget. Course completion is incredible: 96 per cent of people finish their courses and get qualified.

We’ve massively increased diversity too — 21 per cent of learners self-identify as disabled or neurodiverse, 45 per cent are non-white and 56 per cent are women. This is real action to tackle the inequality of low pay.

Our Union Learn programme directly funds the Northern TUC to help workers in the workplace access training and earn more money. Great for low-paid workers — most of whom are women. Employers love it too. It fills skills shortages and lowers staff turnover.

Keeping the two-child benefit cap was a watershed for many in the labour movement. People are keeping schtum for now, not least because they might get disciplined — but denying children with more than one sibling the safety net of the welfare state is morally wrong. Poverty is hugely expensive in the long term, causing ill health, poor educational attainment, and increasing crime.

We engage with hundreds of schools across the North of Tyne. Our Child Poverty Prevention programme directly tackles school uniform poverty. Schools are helped to poverty-proof the school day.

I’d love to be able to change the benefits system — that’s central government power. But we do provide welfare advice for parents in the trusted school environment. It’s life-changing — one family got £11,000 in back-dated benefits for their disabled son.

We support the teachers and teaching assistants too. We fund a peer review system — staff spend time at another school in the region. Urban schools go to rural areas. Affluent to deprived areas. Free from Ofsted pressures, they share best practice and act as a critical friend.

The teachers love it. “I’ve done the Department for Education courses,” one head teacher told me. “They were a bit tick-box. Your programme, though, genuinely challenged me. Because we could meet as professionals, without fear of judgement, I learned so much from my peers.” One teacher told me she had “rediscovered my teaching mojo” and was no longer thinking of leaving the profession.

I’d hope that the evidence base we’re building will serve as a better model of school improvement, and can one day replace Ofsted inspections.

Add in the thousands of jobs we’ve created, and it proves devolution works. Or at least it does with the right leadership.

From May next year, my Combined Authority will expand into a new North East Combined Authority. I pushed hard for this, so we can get transport devolved. We’ve secured billions in devolved transport funding.

I intend to fully integrate buses, light rail and heavy rail with cross-ticketing, reinvigorate the bus network so our rural communities are connected, integrate with active travel — with secure bike parking at public transport stops — and open up new metro lines, and make sure we have guards on the trains.

And to secure its long-term passenger base, I’ll make public transport free for under 18s. All this will be put under public control, with a long-term plan of common ownership.

Remember when Ed Miliband resigned in 2015? If someone had told you about Jeremy Corbyn, the Brexit Referendum, David Cameron resigning, the 2017 election, Theresa May resigning, Boris Johnson proroguing Parliament, the 2019 election, Dominic Cummings, Covid, Ukraine, Liz Truss, and everything else that had happened you would have thought they were a fantasist.

We’re in an unstable world. Aping the Tories risks tilling the soil for the rise of the far right.

Our two-party system and extreme factional control by Labour HQ makes Westminster a hard place to make progress. But there is an alternative.

Outside of Westminster, voters are already choosing another option. Independents, Greens, and a slew of local community parties are winning up and down the country.

To paraphrase Trainspotting: Choose life. Choose jobs. Choose an NHS with workers not too exhausted to work. Choose fair rents. Choose a wealth tax. Choose utilities run in the sustainable interests of the people of Britain and not foreign billionaires.

In council elections and mayoral elections, elect someone who will deliver a change of direction, not just change the name above the door. In May next year, if you want to see a socialist mayor elected in the north-east, choose me.

For more information visit www.jamiedriscoll.co.uk or follow him on X @mayorJD.