Look at Manchester – and weep

Devo Manc

The Autumn Statement from the Chancellor on Wednesday provided yet more good news for the city of Manchester.

Following the recent ‘Devo Manc’ deal that delivered the Greater Manchester region with a significant devolution of powers with over a billion pounds of investment to match, George Osborne announced additional benefits to what he clearly sees as the hub of the Northern Powerhouse , with plans for the establishment of a huge theatre – named the Factory after Tony Wilson’s legendary label; a £235million national advanced materials centre, the Sir Henry Royce Institute, which will be set up at Manchester University; and a whole range of infrastructure projects around road and rail that will directly benefit the Manchester city region.

There were some crumbs off the table, by comparison, for Liverpool, Leeds and Lancashire – but once again the big winner was Manchester with an early Christmas gift from the Chancellor that is worth an estimated £1.3billion.

Rather than be envious of this remarkable deal, struck largely by Manchester Labour politicians with a Tory Chancellor, other northern cities and regions need to finally wake up and learn the lessons that Sir Richard Leese, Sir Howard Bernstein et al have been teaching us for twenty years or more.

City regions and county’s work ‘better together’. They can produce cohesive and consistent policy and strategy proposals that are then efficiently delivered. The economic benefits are tangible. The political fall outs are negligible, and anyway are always kept private.

Whilst Leeds comforted itself with the promise from Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg that it could have devolution without signing up to a ‘Metro Mayor’ (another broken promise Nick?) and Liverpool continues to indulge in a parochialism in politics that is more akin to the practices of a Parish Council than a super Combined Authority, the Chancellor and his Treasury officials took a look at the northern landscape and decided that, Manchester aside, the North simply isn’t mature enough to be trusted with a huge chunk of devolution and cash.

Lancashire’s civic leaders are at least now talking to one another, although there are still threats of UDI from places like Chorley and the Fylde, whilst West Lancashire is flirting with Liverpool and some in the East of the county delude themselves that splitting from the rest of Lancashire would be a genuine option.

By next May, devolution will be a big part of all the major parties agendas. By then it is imperative that the rest of the north gets its act together and has a narrative in place to take maximum advantage of whatever devolved powers and resources are on offer.

A ‘Me Too’ approach is clearly not going to be enough, and it is now crucial that the public and private sectors come together in each region to work up plans that will convince Westminster leaders and officials that we have the maturity to recognise the need for unity, innovation and reform of local governance structures.

If that doesn’t happen, we won’t just have a north-south divide; but a two speed north of England, where Manchester powers ahead, leaving the rest to watch and weep.

What’s in a name?

Networking

There has been a bit of controversy of late in Liverpool with news that a new networking brand ‘Twit Faced’ was about to launch in the city.

Established in Manchester, Twit Faced is organised by a bunch of colourful entrepreneurs, largely from the creative sector of town, and the purpose of the quarterly Friday night out is for business people to come together, let their hair down, have a good time, and, possibly, make some useful business contacts in the process.

Some in Liverpool have suggested that the brand encourages irresponsible drinking behaviour and alcoholism! The same folk who have been pretending for years that Downtown’s very own ‘Sexy Networking’ brand is in some way an open door for sexual predators.

These prudish critics have never bothered to come to a Sexy Networking evening in the ten years we have been hosting them – nor I guess a Twit Faced event in Manchester either– but on the back of what are very clearly tongue in cheek brand names they feel able to take cheap shots (forgive the pun), criticise and make all sorts of false assumptions and accusations.

Comparing Sexy Networking to some sort of cattle market; or Twit Faced to a drink till you drop beer fest is akin to claiming that the Chamber of Commerce’s ‘Eat and Greet’ event promotes obesity.

These are simply brand names that are attempting to stand out from a crowded and, sadly, largely stale, male and pale business networking circuit. Whilst Downtown, Sexy Networking and all, celebrated a decade of activity earlier this year, over 80 networking ‘brands’ have been a gone in the city of Liverpool alone. Many networking platforms in Leeds, Lancashire and Manchester have crashed and burnt too.

Stale cucumber sandwiches, a warm glass of house wine and some stale nibbles in a room full of grey suited blokes is far more offensive networking experience to me than a colourful brand name.

For the 200 plus business folk who attend these ‘edgy’ entitled events, they serve a social and business purpose and there is nothing wrong with that. If you don’t like the name of the event, then don’t attend. But don’t be making things up and making assumptions that you simply cannot back up either. And here’s a thought – try setting up a half decent business networking event yourself, and see how you get on. As I said earlier, many, many have tried – and failed miserably!

Sexy Networking won’t be here forever – but it will never and has never been a platform for lewd behaviour anymore than Stamford Bridge was a football venue where you could go and enjoy a quick grope because Ruud Gullit introduced ‘Sexy Football’ to Chelsea.

I probably won’t attend Twit Faced if and when it does launch in Liverpool. But good luck to it, because the twenty-something entrepreneurs who are emerging as the future businesses of tomorrow are probably looking for something different, something new – and this could be it.

Meanwhile, my Downtown events team will be spending this afternoon coming up with another dynamic programme of events for 2015 that I promise you it will be as eclectic, entertaining, exciting and effective as ever. I look forward to seeing you at some of them next year.

An audience with Sir Richard Leese

Richard Leese

Downtown members were among a small group of business people invited to Manchester Town Hall this week to meet with city leader Sir Richard Leese to discuss the Devo Manc deal.

He is an impressive character, Manchester’s head political honcho, who has masterminded his city regions development and growth masterfully in partnership with his chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein for over twenty years now.

Indeed, he reminded his audience on Tuesday that though the Scottish referendum on independence had possibly accelerated the process of the devolution deal Manchester has secured, the city region had been working on winning such a package for many years now.

Leese was clearly more interested in the additional powers and resources that this ‘settlement’ with Chancellor George Osborne and Westminster provides, rather than the establishment of a Metro Mayor, and he made it clear that only the creation of this post allowed Manchester to unlock the significant wave of new powers that were announced a fortnight ago.

He conceded that other city regions would inevitably win more powers from Whitehall in the coming months and years, as the ‘English votes for English issues’ debate gathers momentum. But he warned that without a recognition that a directly elected figurehead was required to oversee these new powers, then other city regions will have to accept a diluted version of the Manchester deal.

He was also quick to defend the potential challenge of a ‘two speed’ Northwest emerging, with Manchester clearly in the ‘box seat’ to attract and win not only extra government monies, but private sector investment too. It was up to the Liverpool’s and the Lancashire’s to get their act together and catch up. We had to go at the pace of the fastest and most advanced region he argued – and he is right.

If Devo Manc doesn’t give the surrounding city and county regions the kick they need to focus on working in a cohesive and co-ordinated way, you have to wonder if anything ever will.

Leese also expressed the view that for Manchester this is just the beginning. The city wants to make further progress on the devolution agenda, and that lobbying and campaigning process will be helped by having a directly elected figurehead at its helm.

Exciting times for Manchester. Let’s make sure Lancashire and Liverpool are not left behind.

Culture bid is just Capital

Culture Leeds

News that Leeds is considering a bid to become the European Capital of Culture for 2023 should be encouraged, embraced and supported by the city’s business community.

In an age of council cuts and austerity, investing scarce resources in a campaign that may or may not be successful is clearly a risk, but if Leeds is to demonstrate that it has an entrepreneurial approach to its future then this is exactly the type of project that the city has to go for.

Following the superb hosting of Tour de France I wrote here that it was important for Leeds to create a momentum and legacy to this event, and a bid for the Culture title would put a marker down that tells the rest of the UK that Leeds is ambitious and means business.

Liverpool spent over £150m on the European Capital of Culture in 2008. In the event year itself, the badge enabled the city to generate income in excess of £750m. That is a success by anyone’s standards, but it only tells a small part of the story.

What CoC did for Liverpool was to re-establish the city’s self-confidence, win much needed inward investment, create a strong visitor destination economy, and act as a catalyst that has seen Liverpool become the best visited city in the UK outside of London and Edinburgh.

Economically Leeds is in a much stronger position in 2014 than Liverpool was when it decided to bid for CoC in 2004. Nevertheless, Leeds has built a reputation as a centre for professional services that has a strong retail offer, rather than a place that has a broad cultural offer to complement its healthy commercial activity. The fantastic gems the city does have tend to be hidden, and a year in the sun would unearth some of Leeds’ fantastic cultural assets.

This is an opportunity for Leeds to add an additional bow to its marketing package. The city should go for it.

Get Ready for a Deluge of ‘Royal’ Visits

Sexy Politics

Lancashire will be a key area in deciding who will form the next government, with a number of marginal seats to be fought in the county at the polls in May.

At this moment in time all the polling evidence suggests that we are heading for another ‘hung’ parliament with none of the two ‘big’ parties pulling up any trees at the moment; the Tories obsessed once again with the issue of Europe, and Labour being led by a man that is clearly struggling to impose himself in the minds of the electorate as a potential Prime Minister.

For the Liberal Democrats the Coalition agreement has proved to be an unmitigated disaster, and for all their protestations about their input into policies surrounding the low paid, the green agenda and, indeed, the economy, the perception voters have of Nick Clegg & Co is of a party that sold its soul for a whiff of the red ministerial boxes. The tuition fees U-turn effectively killed them.

Labour had hoped to pick up the majority of Lib Dem discontents, and win the election by simply adopting a more traditional social democrat, safety first approach that would enable them to hit the 35% of the vote mark, which would give them a small, but workable, majority.

They had not factored in the backlash to traditional politics that we are witnessing at the moment, nor the fact that they are likely to lose a significant number of ‘safe’ seats themselves north of the border to the Scottish Nationalists.

The Tories will lose votes, if not seats, to UKIP, that may lead to them missing out on some of their target constituencies, and who knows how other minority parties like the Greens and even Plaid Cymru will perform.

It all means that just seven months out from the election, we really have no clue as to the type of government we will have in place next year. The lack of genuine, consistent leadership from either Cameron or Miliband makes it a wide open race, and that means that every vote will count, particularly in this part of the world. Expect a series of high profile visits from Ministers and Shadow Ministers over the next few months – and then sit back and watch as Alex Salmond becomes the Deputy Prime Minister in the next Coalition that is cobbled together post May.