Manchester

It’s Not Who it’s What

Power to the North

This week has been dominated by the news that Manchester is to get a metro mayor, devolved powers and £1billion!

Immediately Liverpool is lobbying hard and screaming ‘us too’, although it is proving challenging for city mayor Joe Anderson to convince his district colleagues to create a ‘Boris for Merseyside’.

Part of the problem, a huge part, is that personalities are getting in the way of progress. The discussion and debate about devolution to Liverpool is fast turning into a conversation about ‘who’ those powers will go to rather than the far more important question of ‘what will those powers be’.

It is recognised by all the council leaders that devolution to the city region level is a good thing. Let’s start with transport, planning, health, social care and housing. More resources, yes please. If we need to agree to have an elected mayor for the region to get this prize, that should be agreed too.

The argument that there is some kind of ‘democratic deficit’ going on with the ‘imposition’ of a new structure of local governance would only hold water if the existing system was not totally broken. Turnouts for Parliamentary seats in this part of the world are poor – for local council elections they are embarrassing.

What is more ‘undemocratic’? A leader for the city region elected by six council leaders between them, behind closed doors – or a directly elected mayor who we all get the chance to vote in, and crucially, vote out if necessary as well.

It is a no brainer, and it is why the leaders of the Greater Manchester authorities took the pragmatic decision to sigh such a deal with Chancellor George Osborne this week, and ensure that their region will continue to be seen as the exemplar of local government.

The window of opportunity for this massive devolution offer will not be open forever. The leaders of our six councils have an absolute duty to get their act together quickly – before that window slams shut.

Can Leeds Airport Survive?

Manchester Airport announced record passenger numbers earlier this week. Blackpool Airport announced it was closing. Airport’s in other provincial cities like Liverpool and Leeds now have to seriously ask if they have a sustainable future over the next decade, as airlines look to ‘hubs’ in order to gain the best commercial bang for their buck – with the pressure on their costs only likely to go one way!

For Leeds in particular, the debate is pertinent, and already on the agenda. Council leader Keith Wakefield has already raised the prospect of the Airport being relocated, with almost everyone accepting that if we were building it today, the Airport would not be located where it is.

The cost of such a move is likely to prove prohibitive, and so the next best option is to develop a significantly improved infrastructure that starts to connect the Airport to surrounding towns and cities.

Unsurprisingly this is the strategy favoured by the Airports management team, but is a huge investment in this type of infrastructure regeneration wise?

The debate over the Airports location has arguably been overtaken by its ability to compete with a genuinely International Airport just over an hour away.

Since Manchester got over its snobbery towards budget flights, the low cost airline owners have flocked there, and it is difficult to see how this trend can be reversed given the development of Airport City on the back of an enterprise zone, and the high speed link from Manchester to London.

It is too early to advocate throwing the towel in yet. But it’s not too early to have the debate about the future of Leeds Airport.

UDI for the North gets ever closer

UDI

As the Scots get ready to go to the polls to decide if they want total independence from the UK, or simply accept a generous additional devolution package that is on offer, the North of England continues to lobby Westminster in the hope that we can get some extra crumbs from the table that doesn’t include multi billion pound infrastructure schemes that, though much needed and long overdue, are at least a decade away from completion.

Local government cuts may have been necessary five years ago, but it is fair to say that those cuts were not imposed in an equitable fashion across the country, and cities like Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds; and indeed counties like Lancashire, have been tasked with taking more than their fair share of the pain since 2010.

Had the austerity programme been evenly distributed across the country then Manchester would be £1million a week better off. Similar statistics are also true in other northern regions.

But it is not only cash but power and responsibility that the north has been starved of. The Scottish parliament has enjoyed a huge amount of autonomy since 1999, whilst even the Welsh Assembly, representing a population that is fewer than Greater Manchester and many other English city regions, have more say over their nations affairs than we do here.

Downtown has long argued that structural reform of local government is vital. However, with that reform must include genuine decentralisation of real additional powers, not least the ability to raise and spend local taxes, greater planning and regeneration autonomy and the opportunity to spend education, training and employment budgets in a more locally relevant fashion.

These ‘asks’ have been made in a rather hopeful, half hearted way in the past; but the Scottish situation means that English devolution is right back on the agenda and this time political and business leaders mean business.

Already the mainstream political parties are talking far more seriously about how a new English devolution settlement can be progressed post the next election. The job now is to turn talk in to action, and once and for all give big northern cities the chance to shape their own destiny.

One North

George Osborne

Another week, another major announcement by the chancellor about big investment into infrastructure projects in the North, as the cities of Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool joined forces to launch the ‘One North’ document, which was duly supported by George Osborne.

Cynics suggest that this series of recent announcements is simply electioneering; a way of convincing northern voters that the Tories have not forgotten them. In reality there are few votes for the Conservatives in Liverpool or Manchester- though in Lancashire and Yorkshire several seats will be keenly contested at next year’s General Election.

In truth, post recession, all the mainstream political parties have woken up to the fact that a UK solely reliant on the success of its capital city is not a sensible long term economic strategy. The huge gap between the South East and the rest of the country has needed addressing for generations, and the planned investment in ambitious transport projects, improving links between northern cities, as well as the much debated HS2 project which provides greater capacity for the routes to and from London are good first steps.

However, it is still in the area of governance that the north can and must make more immediate progress.

HS2, HS3 and the other potential investments into the road network are medium to long term initiatives. Greater power to our region can happen now. Our political leaders, backed by the business community, should demand we get on with it.

David Moyes

Moyes

It came as no surprise that David Moyes failed as the manager of Manchester United. Not to Evertonians anyway.

During his reign at Goodison Park he turned Everton from perennial relegation strugglers to a team that finished consistently in the top half of the table. He replaced an ageing squad with a younger, hungrier group of players. He brought respectability and pride back to one of England’s traditional ‘big clubs’. And on the back of all this, he became the third best paid manager in the Premier League whilst at Everton – and then landed the United job ten months ago.

His achievements at Everton did not go unnoticed; largely due to Moyes’ own ability to spin a very credible and plausible tale. He was doing all this with one hand tied behind his back. He had no money to spend. He was operating on a shoe string budget. He had to sell his best players.

He convinced the media, and he convinced the majority of Everton fans, myself included, that finishing in the top half of the Premier League was ‘job done’ at a club like Everton.

The facts somewhat betray the ‘miracle’ that he and his friends in the press would have us believe he presided over though. Indeed, Everton were not punching ‘above their weight’. They were finishing in a league position that was in and around the amount of money they were spending in comparison to their Premier League rivals.

Other than Wayne Rooney, he was able to replace any player he sold with someone better. He was given the resources to break the club record transfer fee on several occasions. And, he was never undermined by his chairman, or the supporters.

His Premier League record was decent, but closer analysis of his performance at Everton clearly provides evidence that he was a ‘bottler’.

In his eleven years at Everton, Moyes failed to win a single game at Anfield, Old Trafford, Stamford Bridge or the Emirates. He took Everton in to the Champions League in 2005. But his side were knocked out in the qualifying Round.

Though he led the Blues to an FA Cup final against Chelsea in 2009, his side failed to show up on the day, weakly surrendering despite taking the lead within a minute of the games start. Often overlooked, he scraped through to the final with a penalty shoot out victory over Man United’s RESERVES!

In 2012, he was back at Wembley for another semi final, this time against arch rivals Liverpool. Again Everton took the lead. Again, they lost the match as they went in to a second half meltdown against one of the worst Liverpool sides I have ever seen.

In truth most Blues supporters thought it was time for him to go then. He had taken Everton as far as he could.

Unfortunately the clubs chairman was not among that number, and we were ‘stuck with Moyes’ until United came knocking – but not until he had led Everton to an FA Cup Quarter final battering to Wigan.

On his final day in the home managers dug out at Goodison, he was given a heroes farewell by those of us who had accepted his ‘managed expectations.’ The Everton faithful recognised that when the biggest club on the planet come knocking…

There was a guard of honour, a standing ovation and a bloody great send off for a guy who had actually not won us a single trophy or even an away ‘derby’ game in eleven years. He left on the crest of a wave, head held high and with our very best wishes. But then!

It took Moyes eleven minutes to destroy a reputation that it had taken him eleven years to build. In a remarkably stupid press conference at Old Trafford he criticised his former club, the club that had made him, the club that paid him a salary that was the third highest in the league, the club that had given him that rousing farewell only weeks earlier, for not being grateful for a nickel and dime bid for two of their leading players.

He tried to bully Everton in to selling Marouane Fellaini and Leighton Baines on the cheap. He disrespected Everton in a way that would have been unacceptable for any manager to do, let alone one who had enjoyed the long association he had enjoyed with the club.

Not surprisingly Evertonians best wishes evaporated, replaced by the contempt he had shown them and their club.

Long before this though, and long before the disaster that has been the last ten months at United, I knew the Old Trafford job was too big for him. United fans often told me Moyes would succeed Sir Alex and I always, always said ‘that job is too big for him’. So it proved.

The manner in which he was dismissed was appalling, and not in keeping with a club of Manchester United’s stature. However, some may say ‘what comes around goes around.’

Many pundits have argued that Moyes hasn’t been given enough time. In my opinion, ten months or ten years, he would have been unable to hack a job where expectations cannot be managed; defensive football not tolerated. Even inheriting a Premiership winning team, albeit one in decline, he still failed to win at Anfield, the Emirates, Stamford Bridge or, fatefully, Goodison Park.

And if there was ever any more evidence required to prove that Moyes and United would never have worked, you only have to look at Everton since he left, under the leadership of Roberto Martinez.

Gone is the pragmatism, the negativity, the dampening of ambition. The Spaniard oozes positivity, confidence and hope. He dares his club to dream; recognising rather than dismissing its rich and proud history.

He does this whilst his team on the field of play perform in a swashbuckling style that has seen the phrase ‘school of science’ return to Goodison Park, replacing the more conservative ‘people’s club’ motto coined by his predecessor.

David Cameron once said to Tony Blair across the dispatch box of the House of Commons “You were the future once.” Martinez could have shouted the same thing across the dugout of Goodison Park to Moyes as he managed United for the final time.

The Old Trafford hierarchy may not have covered themselves in glory over Moyes’ dismissal, but give them credit for recognising relatively quickly that he was the wrong man for the huge job that is manager of Manchester United.

That does not make Moyes a bad manager though, and I expect him to return to a hot seat soon with a Newcastle, Villa or Sunderland and do a fantastic job for them. That is his level, and he, along with thousands of Evertonians and United fans, should know that now too.