Thomas Hanna and Joe Guinan Democracy and decentralisation are their watchwords: for Corbyn and McDonnell, it’s municipal socialism reinvented www.opendemocracy.net /uk/thomas-hanna-joe-guinan/democracy-and-decentralisation-are-their-watchwords-for-corbyn- and-mcdonn Corbyn and McDonnell's vision of decentralised public ownership comes from a long and popular tradition. Lake Champlain from the municipally owned waterfront, Burlington, Vermont: Nagaraju.ramanna, some rights reserved Labour’s leaders are creating a new twenty-first century socialist political economy for their party – and one that may require reaching back to some of the left’s lost radical traditions in order to achieve it. Beneath all the Sturm und Drang in the media caused by a bitter faction of the Parliamentary Labour Party in semi-open revolt against the most democratically elected leader in their history, something very interesting is taking place in British politics. Between them, Jeremy Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor and close ally John McDonnell are quietly putting together a viable economic alternative to neoliberal austerity – and one, moreover, with a direct focus 1/8