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I’ll be glad to see the back of 2021, not that I have great hopes that much will change in the new year.

The year ended with the Omicron virus taking business and people for a third time into some form of lockdown and a Prime Minister with an increasingly tenuous hold on power.

The year began with a man wearing a horned helmet invading the American Congress building to keep The Donald in power, and it went downhill from there really.

The pandemic has continued to dominate all our lives. After a hard winter, we hoped the spectacular vaccination programme would ensure a return to something like normal life. Instead at the turn of the year, it feels we may be heading back to square one. The former Prime Minister Gordon Brown is right when he says that nobody is safe until everybody in the world is safe. I do not understand why the international effort to vaccinate has been so poor.

Politically it has been a year of shame and stagnation in this country. The government has been constantly assailed by allegations of sleaze whilst the opposition has hardly laid a glove on them. The behaviour of the Prime Minister is partly conditioned by seeing no threat from Labour and endless years in power.

The bright spot in a dark foreign landscape has been Joe Biden’s first year in office. He may be succumbing to his years, but he is a welcome change after the Trump mayhem. He has initiated an infrastructure programme to rival FDR’s New Deal in the thirties. It is likely to be his biggest achievement as the Republicans are likely to make gains in the mid term elections and create stalemate in Congress.

Elsewhere it was mostly bad news with the Taliban back in charge in Afghanistan and China and Russia flexing their muscles in dangerous ways. The Merkel years in Germany came to an end and although the new German Chancellor has had to build a complex coalition, stability is expected to remain the order of the day.

The UK economy bounced back after the worst of the pandemic had passed but that has created its own problems with labour shortages, supply train issues and warnings about inflation. The Chancellor Rishi Sunak is determined not to be saddled with a reputation as a high spending, big state Tory. He is already flagging up that he wants to cut taxes before the 2024 election. He may be in Number 10 by then as well.

The year began with the final moves to sever our links with the EU in respect of the single market and customs union. The pandemic has masked the damage Brexit has done to Britain but the dispute over Northern Ireland tariffs shows that Brexit is far from done.

The North West’s year is best told through the fortunes of various women. Our two big cities have new leaders. Bev Craig took over after decades of Sir Richard Leese leading Manchester. Meanwhile Joanne Anderson’s arrival as elected mayor of Liverpool followed a controversial selection process as the city’s Labour Party was subject to severe criticism in two reports. At least Louise Ellman felt able to rejoin the party she left over anti semitism.

Phillippa Williamson heads up the Conservatives in Lancashire after local elections failed to deliver much midterm cheer for Labour. The worry for Boris Johnson at the moment is coming from the Red Wall seats he won where Tories are unhappy with the non-delivery of levelling up

The big issues of climate change and social care remain unsolved. Like I said, a depressing year

“GOT BREXIT AND JABS DONE,BUT BIT OF A CAD”.

Mark my words, that’s what you’ll be hearing soon from Tory MPs as Johnson bites the dust.

A detailed study has just been published on the General Election that took place two years ago.

It was a time of triumph for Boris Johnson

The man who had been Tory mayor of traditionally Labour voting London.The man who had harried the ineffective Theresa may from office, had now delivered an eighty seat majority. He was soon to get Brexit done.

All those Tories, and there were and are many,who had deep concerns about Johnson’s integrity and methods of working, had to keep their heads down in the face of the election triumph.

Now, this Christmas,two years on,the question is have they had enough? Time and again Ministers have gone on TV and Conservative MPs have gone through the lobbies to support Johnson, only to be left embarrassed when the Prime Minister does a U turn.

The lying over Partygate is truly blatant and depressing. It is the result of a Prime Minister who sends out signals that propriety does not matter.He is incapable of running a properly organised Downing Street office.

The people of North Staffordshire will tell us next week whether they care. Perhaps the voters message will be that the Prime Minister getting Brexit and Covid jabs done is sufficient against the weight of sleaze on the other side.

If Johnson should be worried, so should Sir Keir Starmer.

Not to have a 20 point lead in the polls in the face of this government’s incompetence is a serious indication that Labour is not cutting through.

A weak performance in next may’s local elections may lead to calls for the only person that I can see who is capable of leading Labour to power, Andy Burnham, to take up the biggest challenge in British politics.

LEVEL UP THE TOWNS

At last Wigan’s Lisa Nandy has been given the right job in Labour’s Shadow Cabinet. I never understood why the woman who had championed the cause of northern towns was given the foreign affairs brief.

It was one of the best moves in Sir Keir Starmer’s latest reshuffle which has seen the elimination of the remaining Corbynistas from the highest levels of the party. Lancaster MP Cat Smith quit claiming the denial of the Labour whip to Jeremy Corbyn was “utterly unsustainable” The hard left is still present in large numbers amongst the grassroots and will only be silenced if Starmer manages to establish a big mid term poll lead. He is a long way from doing that which is worrying for Labour considering the recent performance of the Prime Minister.

Lisa Nandy will now be tested against the clever Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove. She knows where it all went wrong for Labour in the North. The neglect of the forgotten towns amid an exclusive emphasis on the cities, and an obsession with woke issues that have little traction in communities struggling to get by. The government’s levelling up agenda has lost focus following alarm that southern Tory voters have not reacted well to it. Nandy needs to expose the broken promises on issues like rail investment, but she also needs to explain what Labour’s regional policy will be. People are far more interested in what Labour would do differently than the easy Punch and Judy show of politics.

Nandy should be pushing for the sort of regional structure proposed, but not completed by John Prescott over a decade ago. Updated for the current world where the green agenda and inclusivity are much more important, Labour should favour development agencies Mark 2 in the North West, North East and Yorkshire focused on the needs of towns, cities and rural areas with major devolved powers and funds. Their priorities and accountability should be the job of elected assemblies whose leaders should work with the sub regional mayors. All local government should be unitary.

OTHER NORTHERN MOVERS IN THE SHAKE UP

Northern firms should welcome the appointment of Jonathan Reynolds as Shadow Business Secretary. The Stalybridge and Hyde MP may find bosses more willing than he expects to give Labour a hearing. This government has hardly been a friend to business. The way Johnson performed at the CBI conference said it all.

Reynolds neighbour in Ashton, Angela Rayner continues to be a thorn in the leader’s side. The Deputy Leader has the talent to break through with Red Wall voters, but she is generally associated with unhelpful stories about being side-lined and calling Tories scum.

Downtown recently hosted an event with London MP Wes Streeting and Urmston’s Kate Green. Our guests have gone their separate ways. Streeting, who works closely with Downtown, is promoted to Shadow Health Secretary whilst Kate has lost her post as Shadow Education Secretary which is a shame.

With Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) and Jim McMahon (Oldham) also retaining Shadow Cabinet jobs, there are five representatives from Greater Manchester in Starmer’s team and none from Liverpool.

For better or worse, the hard left has been sent a signal.

THE QUESTION FACING LIVERPOOL

Liverpool University Professor, Michael Parkinson, has spent much of his academic life studying the way regeneration, business and politics interact in the city.

Next week he is giving a sold-out lecture with the title Liverpool Beyond the Brink, The Remaking of a Post Imperial City. The title is a reminder of a book Michael wrote about the Militant Years, Liverpool on The Brink. That tome was a fascinating account of how the Trots created an image of a city in chaos and hostile to capitalism. It has taken decades to repair the damage and Professor Parkinson wants to be optimistic about the future. “Beyond The Brink” suggests the bad old days are in the rear-view mirror.

However, the academic is no fool. He will reflect on the leaps and bounds in regeneration the city has taken in this century. He will look to the future where the city has great strengths in tourism, the knowledge quarter, the Everton Stadium project, the opportunities for green jobs around projects like the Mersey Barrier/Lagoon. He will point out that the world class health expertise that has long existed in the School of Tropical Medicine will have massively increased significance in a world thirsting for knowledge after the pandemic.

However, is the city really beyond the brink? Commissioners are running large sections of the council’s activities after a damning report exposed malpractice and political intimidation. The elected mayor Joe Anderson stood down, protesting his innocence. The very post of elected mayor is likely to be swept away in a referendum in 2023. The Labour Party in the city is subject to the most stringent controls from London I have ever known.

A report for the National Executive by a former Minister, David Hanson and the highly respected former Leeds leader Judith Blake has demanded that by next Tuesday a wholesale shake up of how Labour councillors operate should be in place. The measures include a register of interests, a code of conduct covering how elected members interface with officers, a formal complaints procedure and training on relations with external partners, a key concern of the Max Caller report a year ago.

So, there we have it, a city transformed in this century in terms of regeneration but while all that was going on the Labour Party in the city apparently learnt nothing from the Militant years and were reverting to type. Not all by the way, I know some fine Labour councillors (and some who walked away) who want to do their best.

So, the question is will this political turmoil affect business investment in the city? The signs are generally that firms are continuing to invest, ignoring the political noise. The City Region under Steve Rotheram is playing a useful role in looking after the wider picture. The recent investment by Ford at Halewood is an optimistic sign.

Professor Parkinson will weigh everything in the balance next week. His conclusion will be interesting.