Category: Liverpool

LIB DEMS WERE RIGHT TO TRIGGER ELECTION.

 

SECOND REFERENDUM FANTASY.

Some Remain Labour MPs have criticised the Lib Dems for backing a General Election. They say support for a second referendum was growing and the parliamentary impasse would eventually lead to the government backing it. I’m afraid this a fantasy. Boris Johnson has embarked on a hard Brexit project and fears that a referendum would lead to a Remain victory, albeit narrow. He would have really died in a ditch rather than agree to it.

Furthermore, the Lib Dem leader, Jo Swinson, was right to draw attention to 19 Labour MPs who, far from moving towards a second referendum, voted for Johnson’s bad deal.

Swinson is now campaigning for a majority Lib Dem government to revoke Brexit. She can do no other, but as it is not going to happen, the BBC’s Andrew Neil was right to challenge her with the following uncomfortable truth. She, and all Remainers, are relying on a Labour minority government to get Brexit stopped. Hopefully Corbyn will have to work with 40 or 50 Lib Dem MPs, and 50 odd SNP MPs who will insist on a referendum choice between Remain and the softest of Brexit options being put to the country.

Although Corbyn will struggle to deal with the charge that Labour has been captured by the extreme left, it should be noted that in the last week two moderate MPs, Margaret Hodge and Diana Johnson have survived attempts to deselect them. It is perhaps a sign that there is sanity in the wider Labour membership that will resist Momentum.

JOE ANDERSON REACHING OUT.

Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson will be facing the voters again next year having fended off internal opposition and attempts to abolish the post, but next Wednesday he’ll encounter our CEO Frank McKenna at a Downtown event in the city. Ahead of that I’ve been listening to the key people involved in Liverpool’s future.

Anderson has his critics and acknowledged that recently in respect of the council’s first Inclusive Growth Plan for the city. He accepted that the Town Hall had not reached out enough to the public and stakeholders in its efforts to tackle the multiple problems the city continues to face.

He certainly needs all the help he can get now. Referring to the government’s claim that austerity was over, the city’s impressive new Chief Executive, Tony Reeves, has said “it doesn’t feel like it in Liverpool”. A Town Hall official tells me there are no reserves and there is an embargo on non-essential expenditure.

That said the mayor points out the positives. £58m more generated in the local economy than 9 years ago, the development of the waterfront with 70 cruise liners visiting the city.

 

Anderson claims the “Preston Model” of using local companies and people has been in practice in Liverpool too. He wants to use that approach in building schools. He wants a mutual bank to issue low deposit mortgages.

Tony Reeves observes that the city has some of the finest health expertise in the city’s universities and close by some of the worst life expectancy rates in the country. The new Inclusive Growth Plan aims to tackle that.

Michael Parkinson from the Heseltine Institute believes the time has come for the city to concentrate more on economic competitiveness than physical regeneration, the local economy being too small.

Urban Splash boss Tom Bloxham once observed that it takes 30 years to become an overnight success. Joe Anderson hasn’t that long, but he is on the journey.

 

 

LIVERPOOL OUTPACING MANCHESTER GROWTH ?

 

 

MAYOR LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS.

 

After my last two blogs on the Greater Manchester economy which took a bullish view of the conurbation’s growth; it is time to look at the surprising claim that Merseyside is outpacing its neighbour.

In the run up to the International Festival of Business, I am looking at the economic prospects of our three city areas, including Preston which I will review next week.

City Metric, a New Statesman magazine urban website, claims that over the last twenty years Liverpool has grown faster than any other city apart from London, Edinburgh and Cardiff. The reasons for this range from the fact that it started from a low base, benefitted from the legacy of Capital of Culture 2008, built the Echo Arena and opened the 42 acres of Liverpool One shopping. In addition, the sub region has seen an influx of students, land is affordable, and it has received  over £2bn in European aid. Whether Whitehall will be as generous in the post Brexit era is a question for another day.

Responsibility for strategic economic growth in the Liverpool City Region rests on the shoulders of Mayor Steve Rotheram. A former bricklayer he helped Joe Anderson win the city for Labour in 2010 before reluctantly becoming an MP. He told a recent Downtown event that he thought the parliamentary procedure book called Erskine May, was a girl! Despite having little enthusiasm for the old-fashioned procedures of parliament he did remarkable work on the Hillsborough justice campaign and became parliamentary aide to Jeremy Corbyn despite voting for Andy Burnham for leader.

Both he and Andy Burnham quit Westminster to take up the mayoral conurbation jobs and work closely together. They are both demanding more power to make their economies work. They are particularly frustrated that they have no direct power over organisations like Network Rail or the Highways Agency(HA).

It seems the HA is aware of the growing complaints of the mayors. Tim Gamon, Regional Delivery Director for Highways England, recently claimed his organisation was conducting more consultation than ever before on eight major road improvement schemes across the North West. These include finishing the M60 smart motorway project, improving connections between the M67 at Hyde and the MI at Sheffield, to better links to Fleetwood and the Rimrose Valley project to upgrade links between the Port of Liverpool and the motorway network.

The mayors probably back these schemes but have little power over what they see as unaccountable national agencies. The mayors claim the North will always suffer from the Treasury’s Benefit Cost Ratio formula which favours the South East because of its huge commuter population and high land values.

Even with the good news on growth, the Liverpool City Region suffers from low skills. Rotheram says he’d like to get his hands on £1.28bn that lies unspent in the apprenticeship levy pot.

Future economic targets for the Mayor include bringing the Spanish train builder Talgo to St Helens, and progress on the Mersey Barrage.

Rotheram has less power than Andy Burnham who includes NHS spending in his portfolio as well as police and fire. The complication for Rotheram is that his region includes Halton which is under Cheshire for police and fire. Consequently, when Jane Kennedy stands down as Police and Crime Commissioner(PCC) for the Liverpool City Region, she will have to be replaced as Halton has a different PCC.

Tensions between Joe Anderson, the city mayor, and Rotheram at the region, seem to be easing, allowing the hope that both Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region can prosper. But what about Preston?

Follow me @JimHancockUK

 

 

 

LIVERPOOL BUSINESS WANTS END OF POWER BATTLE

 

An agonised call for the elected mayors of Merseyside to stop their power battles and get on with promoting the city region was made at a Downtown event in the city this week.

Many of the movers and shakers in the area were kind enough to give their time to look at the city’s development in the ten years since Capital of Culture and what the next decade has in store.

The overriding desire was for Liverpool City mayor Joe Anderson and City Region mayor Steve Rotheram to end their rivalry, agree on who does what, and get on with attracting business and tourism to the area.

The main frustration focuses on the many agencies that are doing bits and pieces to attract jobs and visitors. The demand is for one point of contact, particularly for tourism. The consensus was that this is a job for the city region. Acknowledging that Liverpool is the brand, it was felt that the city region should have this strategic role.

The way in which successive governments have devolved power in the UK is partly to blame. At the Downtown meeting, it was pointed out that the Scottish Government and Welsh Assembly could put major funding into attracting business and tourism. Aberdeen and Cardiff are building new conference centres on the back of that. In England, limited power and money has been given to a complex model of Local Enterprise Partnerships and Combined Authorities. In Merseyside and Greater Manchester, the structure of elected city regional mayors over the top of the proud cities of Manchester and Liverpool is a recipe for rivalry. There are some signs of tension in Greater Manchester but the ten districts generally rub along together. Merseyside on the other hand has had a controversial history at local government level with Wirral and Southport wanting to break away, not to mention the Militant era. The business community had hoped all that was well in the past. Liverpool is transformed compared to twenty years ago but this model of city and city region mayor couldn’t have been better designed to revive the old dysfunctional problems.

Added to the structural problems we have two strong personalities. Joe Anderson, passionate for his city, has done great work since 2010 but he wanted to move on to the wider city region stage. In his way was his old friend Steve Rotheram. A way out would have been for Joe to take over from Steve as MP for Walton. That elegant solution was blocked by Unite The Union who wanted their man in Walton.

Now business people in Liverpool are confused about the powers of both mayors at a time when they know that more will be expected of them in terms of promoting jobs and tourism as the cuts continue to bite in the public sector.

The Downtown event concluded that the next ten years are going to be harder after the rapid progress of the last decade. Specific attention was paid to the continuing problems of accessing the city centre from the M62 and the need to fill hotels during the week. In this respect the city seems to have an opposite problem to many other places who find attracting weekend guests a challenge.

One of the most striking views at the Downtown meeting was that, in respect of tourists visiting Britain, the national image was being tarnished by Brexit. It was thought this could be an opportunity for the Liverpool City Region to promote itself separately.

Let’s hope the mayoral problems can be sorted out because the meeting agreed that the Liverpool City Region with that to-die-for waterfront, friendly people and the enduring power of the Beatles gives it potentially great prospects for the future.

Follow me @JimHancockUK.

 

 

LEEDS AND LIVERPOOL RACE FOR POWERS

 

NEXT CITY DEALS ?

Following Greater Manchester’s devolution deal, the race by other northern combined authorities is on with a vengeance. In Leeds last week the Deputy Prime Minister announced that packages for Leeds and Sheffield would be agreed before the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement. Lord Heseltine is trying to bang heads together in Liverpool which is displaying its usual propensity for internal bickering. Meanwhile talks are under way amongst Lancashire’s myriad number of councils to try and get the first powerhouse deal outside the major cities.

 

I have attended a number of devolution conferences in the last week and watched nearly all of the BBC’s regional debates across England. My worst fears have been confirmed. Apart from the city regionalists, people from smaller towns and rural areas are hopelessly divided on what devolution they want. There is no clarity on how to solve the issue of English votes for English laws. There was virtually no debate on how an elected Lords could represent the North and not just the South East.

 

So it looks as if the Tories get back we will have piecemeal devolution to a number of city regions with little for the rest of the North which will be left with its confusing patchwork of district, met and county councils and ad hoc bodies created to deal with major infrastructure issues. Labour’s promise of a comprehensive constitutional convention seems worth voting for.

 

A couple of final thoughts on the position of Leeds and Liverpool. The Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg told us in Leeds that we should not presume that Leeds (and Sheffield) would have to have elected mayors. This seems strange when the government, in the shape of George Osborne, insisted on it in Greater Manchester as a democratic requirement. Will Leeds and Sheffield get less powers in return for no elected mayor? Is Clegg doing his own thing in Yorkshire? This is what happens with a piecemeal approach. Different strokes for different folks ends in chaos.

 

In Liverpool Jo Anderson continues with his schizophrenic performance. He has used leadership and imagination to save the city’s libraries but on the issue of devolution he is not handling things well. He needs to work with Phil Davies, the leader of the Combined Authority, not continue to make snide comments about part time politicians meeting every four weeks. Also his ambition to be the elected metro mayor takes no account of the democratic processes of the Labour Party. If an elected mayor was on offer, Phil Davies or Jane Kennedy (the current Merseyside Police Commissioner) might at least want to offer an alternative to Joe’s coronation. The important thing here is that all the infighting is putting off the government from granting the Liverpool City Region its powers. It is also fuelling the prejudices of those who claim that nothing really changes in Liverpool. It is manifestly not true but people need to stop shooting themselves in the foot.

 

UKIP FOX SHOT

 

The much derided European Court of Justice has come to David Cameron’s rescue. So we can stop benefit tourism after all. It is a much exaggerated problem anyway. Most foreign workers want to come here make our sandwiches, pick our potatoes and pay their taxes.

 

The interesting question is whether it will slow UKIP’s momentum in next week’s Rochester by election. At the moment it looks as if the reckless Reckless will win. The Tory candidate is very poor. If UKIP do win, the Tories need to steady their nerve and pro European Conservatives need to have the guts to speak up for the EU and not just leave it to Ken Clarke.