North

Lancashire United

Lancashrie Rose

Last night over a thousand business leaders packed in to the Winter Gardens for the annual Red Rose Awards to celebrate the success of a diverse and impressive number of companies who have enjoyed a successful twelve months.

The event, hosted by the excellent publication Lancashire Business View, was no doubt a fabulous evening, and one I was really sorry to miss due to commitments today.

As they sat celebrating the wonderful business stories from across the county guests can be forgiven for not giving too much thought to the discussion and debate that I referred to in my blog here last week, whereby cities and city regions are increasingly seen as the future of economic growth in the UK.

So, how should Lancashire respond to the notion of cities exclusively taking the mantle of economic growth hubs, and indeed the idea presented by Evan Davies in his excellent BBC programme ‘Mind the Gap’ that to compete with London a Northern ‘super city’ ought to be created, consisting of Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds.

There is much merit in these three giants working more collaboratively, as I pointed out last week, but it then leaves the question as to how places like Lancashire, Cheshire and Cumbria will be supported.

If national policy continues to drive city hubs as the solution to relative economic decline in the North, then counties can only suffer – unless they create a fresh operating environment themselves.

There has been near irrational resistance from the various components that make up the Red Rose County to accept a hub city or an attack brand that can lead the marketing and business development agenda for Lancashire.

The Local Enterprise Partnership has performed remarkably well in bringing the disparate parts of the area together, but the underlying tensions between Blackburn, Preston and Blackpool still exist.

As the surrounding boroughs of Manchester, Liverpool and Leeds buy in to the inevitability of city hubs being the only way to drive city region wealth, albeit some more enthusiastically than others, Lancashire continues to insist on equal distribution of resource across its vast expanse, therefore diluting the offer that a united Lancashire would offer.

Both the private and public sectors need to address this problem before it’s too late. Ninety nine councils, hundreds of councillors and several Chamber of Commerce organisations representing one county cannot be right. A combined approach to our collective challenge will help enormously, and we’ll be approaching you soon to ask if you’re up for helping Lancashire overcome that challenge.

An Unhealthy Imbalance

Outlook for Cities

Another report, another confirmation of the economic chasm that exists between London and the rest of the country.

The Centre for Cities report ‘Cities Outlook 2014’ highlighted the growing gap between North and South, in particular planet London and the rest of us.

London accounted for a huge 80% of private sector jobs created between 2010-2012, while Britain’s nine next largest cities combined created only 10% of private sector work.

In actual terms 216,700 jobs were created in London in the two year period, compared to the next best figure which is Manchester’s 13,200.

Cities like Liverpool can partially celebrate the news that more private sector jobs have been created than in previous years, but then we have to accept the low base from which the city was starting from; and the yet to be fully felt impact of massive public sector cuts across Merseyside, and indeed the North of England generally.

Successive governments have tried, and quite clearly failed, to address what has been an unhealthy imbalance in the UK economy for far too many years, and it is now surely time for our politicians to accept that only radical, structural reform that allows genuine decentralisation of power to our great city regions and counties is not just desirable, but absolutely essential.

Poorly funded Local Enterprise Partnership’s, a scattering of city mayors and combined authorities are the existing vehicles that are in place to give the regions a better chance of competing with the London beast. As the figures show, they simply aren’t working.

The problem is that whichever colour the government, Westminster finds it incredibly difficult to give up the patronage it has held over the rest of the country for centuries.

‘How can we trust those Northerners to elect politicians who will do the right thing’; or ‘We know best’ is the long held view in the corridors of Westminster power. Crumbs off the table for the odd city deal here; the much trumpeted but ineffective Regional Growth Fund; and other poorly funded one-off initiatives are apparently all we deserve.

It is time we in the north started to demand more. Private/ public sector partnerships have thrived in Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds and Lancashire for many years now, but to maximise the potential of this collaboration we need a genuine transfer of powers AND resource.

The models of governance can be debated and discussed within the regions, and one size may not fit all, but we can’t go on like this.

For me the starting point is adopting an economic strategy that recognises the dangers and absurdity of more than 80% of the nation’s wealth being created in one city; a meaningful redistribution and decentralisation of funding for major city regions and counties, including an increase in borrowing limits and control over council tax and business rates; plus the establishment of regional investment banks.

Will the North ever love the Tories?

Conservatives

This week saw the three main political parties reshuffle their cabinet and shadow cabinet members respectively.

The key aim of such a process is not necessarily to replace incompetent or underperforming politicians with better people, but often about boosting your party’s appeal to the electorate.

Certainly, the spin coming out of the Prime Minister’s office this week was that he wanted the changes he made to signal a more inclusive Conservative Party, with the elevation of female MP’s and MP’s from northern constituencies.

Among the Northern contingent to get the call from the PM were Esther McVey, the formidable Wirral West Liverpudlian MP, who ticked both boxes, and was rewarded for her tenacious role in selling the welfare reform agenda with a job as Employment Minister, and Yorkshire MP and former Bradford council leader Kris Hopkins, who has been appointed as the new Housing Minister.

Overall there is certainly a more ‘northern feminine’ feel to the Cameron team, albeit none of those promoted will be sat at the top table of government just yet.

So, will these personnel changes make it more likely for the northern electorate to support the Tories at the 2015 General Election?

On a straw poll of about a dozen people so far, the answer is a resounding no. I accept that this is hardly a scientific sampling of voting intentions, but they were all the type of folk who the main political parties use as their ‘barometer’ – although I’m not sure all of them have or aspire to have conservatories, which apparently is the new ‘sweet spot’ as far as the politicos are concerned (I kid you not).

Without exception, and as I wrote last week, the key thing for all of them is the economy. If the recent upturn proves to be sustainable, the Tories will win. If not, then Miliband’s pitch to ‘the squeezed middle’ might just resonate – though, worryingly for Labour, he still fails to meet the ‘I can see him as a Prime Minister’ test.

Personalities in politics are clearly important, but anyone at government level outside of the PM, Chancellor, Foreign Secretary and Boris Johnson, not in the government per se, but more powerful than most politicians, just doesn’t hit the radar of most of us.

So it is the Prime Minister’s highest ranking (northern) Minister and colleague, Tatton’s George Osborne, who can deliver victory for him at the next election, rather than the smattering of female MP’s with northern accents who have climbed another rung on the slippery Westminster ladder this week. Oh, and by the way, even if we vote Tory in this part of the world, few of us actually love ‘em!