Jim Hancock

DARK MATTER:THE HIDDEN FORCE OF POLITICS

Nigel Farage and Mayor Joe Anderson of Liverpool have gravitational pull at the moment. The effect is similar to dark matter; that’s the mystery force that’s controlling the behaviour of the universe. You can’t see it but you can detect it from the effect it has on other planets or in our case politicians.

IDES OF MAY IN ST HELENS.

Marie Rimmer has been deposed as the leader of St Helens Council. That’s a shame because we need more women leading our local councils Marie has been a doughty fighter for her town and didn’t think much of the idea of a Merseyside regional mayor. This was partly because she thought it would mean domination by Liverpool and particularly Joe Anderson. Marie has been replaced by her deputy Barry Grunewald. He learnt the dark arts of politics in Labour’s North West headquarters in Warrington.

The suggestion is that Barry is more disposed to the idea of a city region mayor. The gravitational force of Mayor Joe may be at work. However it is up to the government to bring in the reform and my betting is that there will be little progress on that front in this parliament.

UKIP IN THE NORTH.

UKIP’s breakthrough in terms of councillors elected was predominantly in east and south east England where Eastern European workers have been prepared to pick the strawberries and dig the potatoes that British people aren’t prepared to do.

They secured very few council places in Downtown land. Two in North Yorkshire, bordering Leeds, where the Conservatives retained a substantial majority. They lost their seat in Derbyshire where Labour gained control and are not represented in Cumbria. The council is still hung but with Labour gaining ten seats, a continuation of the unlikely Labour/Tory coalition seems unlikely.

Now we come to Lancashire. Some commentators have said Labour should have taken the county outright. That was a big ask following the drubbing they took in 2009. 22 gains gives them largest party status and political momentum.

Coalitions have not been part of the Lancashire tradition. During the only previous period when no party had overall control (1985-89) Labour had minority rule. This option is open to Jenny Mein or she could do a deal with the Lib Dems who performed better than their national opinion poll ratings.

However don’t underestimate Geoffrey Driver. As I write he has still not conceded power a week after polling day. UKIP may not have elected any councillors in the Red Rose county but they certainly exerted a powerful gravitational force on Mr Driver’s Tories. In twenty wards the combined Conservative/UKIP vote was greater than the winning total for Labour or other parties.

Driver faces Gordon Brown’s dilemma three years ago in trying to create a rainbow coalition. He needs more than the six Lib Dems. If the single Green Party councillor won’t play ball, The Tories would need two of the three Independents. It looks a bit rickety for Mr Driver who needs to keep his eye on ambitious Lytham councillor Tim Ashton.

You always need to watch your back in politics. Just ask Marie Rimmer.

UKIP ARE A PLAYER,SO HOW WOULD WE VOTE ON EUROPE?

As we’ve seen in the local elections, UKIP don’t have to win masses of seats to have a big effect on British politics.

Tory backbenchers are terrified of them and now want the European in/out referendum before the next election. They want legislation to trigger the vote in next week’s Queen’s Speech. Mr Cameron had tried to appease the Euro sceptics with a promise to put a renegotiated terms package to the people by 2017.

But there is no appeasing these anti EU fanatics, they will take the concessions and move on to the next demand.

How will the nation vote when actually faced with the consequences of coming out?

This week Downtown Liverpool held a debate and vote on this very subject. While it would be absurd to suggest the result is scientifically representative, nevertheless I think 17 for coming out of the EU, 21 against with a substantial 14 saying they don’t know feels as if it might be where public opinion is at the moment. In other words there is substantial support for withdrawal and a large number of votes to play for amongst people who choose not to obsess about Europe every day.

It was a lively debate, to be repeated in Manchester soon. I led off trying to cram too much into my allocated 5 minutes. I expressed my fear that Ed Miliband will be pressurised into supporting an in/out referendum, that the renegotiation will be unsuccessful, that nevertheless the three main parties will urge a vote to stay in and the British people will be swayed by the Murdoch press into voting to come out. I then foresaw a very difficult process of withdrawal with no guarantee that we could negotiate the same trade arrangements from outside the EU.

Dougal Paver, head of PaverSmith Communications Agency disagreed saying that it would not be in the EU’s interest to put tariffs on British goods. He also said that most of our trade was with the rest of the world now. He loved visiting Europe but didn’t want to be shackled by EU regulations on small businesses.

Kevin Doran is hoping to be elected as a Labour Euro MP next year and firmly wants to stay in the EU. He said David Cameron’s promise of a referendum had created uncertainty among long term potential investors in Britain. He also said it was unclear which powers Mr Cameron wanted to claw back from Europe.

The final speaker was Scott Fletcher, MD of ANS Group, who said the British people agreed to a European trade deal not the all singing, all dancing EU that we have got now. He said the way the EU was governed bore similarities to the old Soviet Union in terms of its unaccountability.

The vote was more or less a three way split and if that is where the UK is at the moment, pro Europeans are going to have their work cut out to prevent a disastrous no vote in 2017 whoever is in power.

LANCASHIRE: MILIBAND’S BIG TEST

Can Ed Miliband drill through the seam of local election apathy in Lancashire and release the gas that could help him soar to power in 2015?

The county has recently been shaken by shale gas exploration, could the same happen in the county elections next week? It is the Labour leader’s opportunity to show he has the ability to win back the middle class votes he needs in places like Chorley and Rossendale

It is that time in the local election cycle when the cities fall silent and the voice of the rural north is heard. Voters will be going to the polls in the shire counties across England including North Yorkshire, which skirts the northern suburbs of Leeds, Derbyshire, Cumbria and crucially Lancashire.

Four years ago the county elections were a harbinger of doom for Gordon Brown. The Tories gained a massive 22 seats in the Red Rose County to sweep into power under the controversial Geoff Driver with a majority of 18. The Liberal Democrats, then untainted by decisions in government, also did well gaining 5 seats from Labour in Burnley alone.

It’s sad in many ways that Lancashire councillors will be very vulnerable to the national mood of the electorate. A good local track record cannot always save you from defeat. That may also be true for Cllr Driver who many feel has done a good job whilst ruffling a few feathers. But he’s been doing that since he was Chief Executive of Preston many years ago. He has been prepared to defy his own party clashing with Education Secretary Michael Gove over academy primary schools in the county.

Labour’s opinion poll lead has weakened recently and they lag the Tories when people are asked about economic competence. That said the Conservatives look set for the mid term blues as people facing benefit changes, no work or just a general squeeze on their living standards take it out on the Tories and their Lib Dem allies. Although that Lancashire Conservative majority of 18 looks secure, 14 wards are held by the party with majorities under 500.

Burnley will be the main battleground for the Liberal Democrats. On the back of their county success in 2009,Gordon Birtwhistle won the parliamentary seat a year later. If his local colleagues lose to Labour, his power base will be eroded.

There is a strong tradition of female Labour leadership in Lancashire. The successor to previous council leaders Louise Ellman and Hazel Harding is Jennifer Mein. She has not made a notable impact so far and indeed there are rumours that David Borrow, the ex Ribble South MP, may challenge her for the leadership after polling day.

The Green Party will hope to gain on their 2 seat representation on the county from the city of Lancaster. The BNP are a diminished force and are expected to lose their presence at County Hall. That leaves Tom Sharrett as the Idle Toad Party representative from South Ribble. He’ll be hopping mad if he loses!

Let’s hope local issues like the care of the elderly, education, roads and the council’s attitude to fracking for shale gas get an airing in the campaign rather than it just being an opinion poll on the Coalition.

Cumbria County Council recently faced a similar major decision affecting the environment when it said no to permanent underground storage of nuclear waste. The county is run by an unusual Conservative-Labour coalition. It will be interesting to see if the two parties stick together if Labour becomes the largest party.

Labour will expect to regain Derbyshire whilst North Yorkshire looks set to retain a Tory majority even in this difficult year for the party.

The wild card in these elections is UKIP. Their policies on local government remain vague. But how many voters will stop to ask themselves what could a UKIP councillor actually do for me at the Town Hall where our membership of the European Union is not an issue?

UKIP will take most, but not all votes from the Tories. They may not win many seats but could make the difference in marginal wards

ATLANTIC GATEWAY: CHALLENGE FOR THE NORTH

Why is so much freight imported through Felixstowe and Southampton and then trundled up North?

It is a very pertinent question with fuel prices rising so fast.

Across the North we need to accelerate a concept that has been around for a few years now, the Atlantic Gateway. It is a concept based on the widening of the Panama Canal and the building of a new deep water terminal in Liverpool (work begins on that very soon). The idea then is that freight from the Americas and Ireland can use the land bridge across the North of England to Hull to access North West Europe.

Along the land bridge jobs will be created using the fantastic assets that are there. They range from Stobart’s Multi Modal Depot at Widnes, the soon to be built Mersey Gateway bridge between Runcorn and Widnes, the Manchester Ship Canal with new port depots along its length, Manchester Airport City and the Northern Hub which will benefit rail transport across the Pennines where the M62 heads for the rapidly developing city of Leeds and on to Hull, the gateway to the Baltic.

Although this is a grand design and big firms will play a major part, there is a crucial role for SMEs. This was highlighted at a recent conference that focused on the often dry subject of logistics. This is because the purpose of the Atlantic Gateway project is to get products to distributors and manufacturers as soon as possible.

Organised by the Liverpool Local Enterprise Partnership and supported by Jaguar Land Rover at Halewood and Unipart the conference looked at the current state of the economy as this huge project is embarked upon.

Kieran Ring, Chief Executive of the Global Institute of Logistics said that the widened Panama Canal would dramatically affect global trade. The price of oil is really impacting the cost of inland distribution and short sea crossings would grow. Liverpool was in the right place to benefit.

Closer to home,Stephen Carr, Head of Business Development for Peel Ports said the Mersey/Atlantic Gateway concept was already being practised by companies like Heinz in Wigan, Typhoo tea and Kellogg’s in Trafford Park. He wryly observed that there actually was nothing new in the Gateway concept producing an 1894 map showing the rail connections around the new Manchester Ship Canal.

Scott Hardy, Freight Strategy Manager at Jaguar Land Rover was in buoyant mood. JLR had there best ever month in March with great sales figures for the new Range Rover, the Freelander and Evoque. He illustrated the formidable logistics exercise that JLR had to undertake between their factories at Halewood, Castle Bromwich and Solihull in the UK and their Chinese operation. It all depended on being highly competitive with stock levels. There was a big opportunity to increase imports from America through Liverpool.

Liverpool MP Louise Ellman is also chair of the Transport Select Committee. She announced an inquiry into Britain’s ports She attacked the lopsided investment in transport infrastructure spend between the North and the South. She said this was because decisions on spend were based on congestion (always a problem in the South) not the economic impact investment would have in the North.

Its important we get on with the Atlantic Gateway project across the North so that we are ready for the pick up in the economy when it eventually comes.