Category: Uncategorized

FEELING GOOD.

How are you feeling this weekend? I’m emerging from my pandemic gloom and I wonder why. Well, the weather is wonderful, very like last spring when the sunshine was the only consolation as the virus took hold.

But more substantially, the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd was a relief because otherwise America would have been plunged back into riots. Let’s not kid ourselves that the country is about to live up to its declaration that all men (and women) are created equal, but perhaps it is a turning point.

Then there was the demise of the European Super League after three days. Our MD, Frank McKenna, has given his thoughts on his blog, so suffice for me to make two points. One is that the new Champions League concession to allow two underperforming big clubs to qualify on their past record should be withdrawn. There is no need to appease these disgraced giants anymore. Second, I will be surprised if these overseas billionaire owners will allow fans any meaningful control of their clubs. The only hope is that they will now lose interest, take their money away and allow football to get off this obscene money escalator.

UP THE POLL!

I think one of the reasons polling is often low in local elections is because of the complexity. County, unitary and district councils elected on different cycles, with sometimes all the councillors up for election, sometimes only a third.

Well on May 6^th we have complexity in bucketloads. Because last year’s elections were postponed, we have the biggest round of local voting ever in the North West.

For the first time county elections in places like Lancashire will be held at the same time as polls for a third of the councils in Greater Manchester and Merseyside. There are some unitary council elections along with rural districts. Cheshire’s unitary councils are not up this year. There are some parish council polls including a ward in Handforth, although Jackie Weaver is not a candidate!

There are also mayoral and police and crime commissioner elections which I will cover next week.

THE POLITICAL PROSPECTS.

The seats coming up on metro district councils were last contested just before the EU Referendum in 2016. The Tories lost 48 seats nationally which wasn’t bad a year into David Cameron’s majority Conservative government. Labour’s performance was lacklustre in Jeremy Corbyn’s first round of local elections.

The county council seats coming up for election were last contested in the middle of the 2017 General Election campaign. Theresa May did well make 558 gains, which gave little sign of her underperformance weeks later when she fell short of an overall majority.

In Lancashire, the Tories won by a substantial majority under controversial leader Geoff Driver. He is retiring after decades as a major figure in the county’s politics so this could be an opportunity for Azhar Ali’s Labour Party to make progress in a county they controlled from 1981-2005. A Labour- Liberal Democrat coalition leads Cumbria whilst the Conservatives will be hoping to hold on in Derbyshire with the help of Edwina Currie. The former Minister is standing in Whaley Bridge.

The metropolitan district councils of most interest are ones with no party in overall control, Wirral, Bolton, and Stockport.

On the unitary council front, all out elections are being held in Warrington and Halton and for a third of Blackburn with Darwen. All Chorley’s district councillors are up for election.

I’ll have a final look at the likely outcome next week, but this will be a judgement on the handling of the pandemic. The PM has had a major triumph with the vaccination programme while Keir Starmer has struggled to cut through. Perhaps the Tory sleaze row will help him if it starts to resonate with the public, but now it looks like being a comfortable result for the Tories.

DÉJÀ VU ELECTIONS.

Over the next three weeks, I’m going to look at the big round of national and local elections coming on May 6^th. After three General Elections and a major referendum in under five years, people were fed up with voting. The virus has caused a 17-month break in democracy, so it will be interesting to see if much has changed since the Tories swept to an 80-seat victory at Christmas 2019.

I suspect little has altered. The Tories are riding on a vaccination bounce, Labour is finding it difficult to grasp the voters’ attention in a pandemic and the Lib Dems remain sadly irrelevant. North of the border the unchanging pattern is the same with the Scottish National Party way ahead of the Tory and Labour parties scrapping to be in second place.

Next week I’ll preview the northern local council elections and the week before polling it will be the turn of the mayors and police and crime commissioners.

INDYREF IN ALL BUT NAME.

The elections to the Scottish Parliament will effectively be an independence referendum in all but name. Despite big problems with crime and education, the SNP have kept voters’ sole attention on gaining independence. So, we have the SNP, the Scottish Greens and Alex Salmond’s Alba Party lined up against the Tories, Labour, the Lib Dems, and All for Unity (George Galloway), favouring the union.

The SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is seen to have handled the pandemic well and has left Alex Salmond looking like an old man bearing a grievance.

The Scottish Tories, although well behind in the polls, are in relatively good nick. The loss of Ruth Davidson as leader is a big blow but her successor, Douglas Ross, has made a good start making it clear he is no cypher for Boris Johnson whose Etonian manner makes him deeply unpopular in Scotland.

Labour have had 9 leaders since the Scottish Parliament was set up, all increasingly ineffective since the giant Donald Dewar left the stage. At last Anas Sarwar seems to hold out the possibility that they can regain second place in Scottish politics, although there is a mountain to climb to convince voters to leave independence behind and see Labour, in their historic role as the party to deal with poverty, health and education.

Labour have been out of power in Scotland since 2007 and that’s not going to change this time.

Willie Rennie is a good leader of the small group of Lib Dems and accompanying Alex Salmond in the room for elderly men who just cannot let go is gorgeous George Galloway, now on to his fourth political party with All for Unity.

THE BIG FINANCIAL QUESTION FOR THE SNP.

The SNP should be closely questioned on this before people vote on May 6^th.

North Sea oil revenues originally drove the SNP grievance. That is a rapidly diminishing asset. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reckon that the Scottish budget deficit could hit 28% of GDP. An independent Scotland with its own currency and bank would be unable to call on the UK for support nor the EU. Scottish membership of the EU would be likely blocked by the Spanish over Catalonian independence fears.

JUST SAY NO.

People can vote to be poor and free, so what if that is the message from Scotland on May 6^th. Boris Johnson could just say no, which could be risky. He only has to look to the consequences of his reckless Brexit policy in Northern Ireland.

He could offer more devolution, but that has only stoked the independence appetite so far.

He could offer talks on a confederation of the nations of the UK and Northern Ireland.

Probably the best solution would be a two-stage referendum. One to trigger detailed talks where the full implications of independence could be spelt out and then another referendum to finally decide.

LABOUR IN TROUBLE IN WALES.

The Scottish poll will overshadow the vote in Wales where things aren’t looking great for Labour in another nation it used to dominate. The latest poll indicates they will be the largest party but with the Tories not far behind. Plaid may pick up seats too, but the appetite for independence remains weak. Indeed, representatives calling for the abolition of the existing Senedd may get elected.

TOUGH CHOICES FOR OPPONENTS.

The government is right to consider the limited use of Covid passports.

The hospitality industry, the cultural sector, sport, and airlines have been decimated by the virus and are entitled to as much support as possible, even if it offends some liberal consciences. Workers in pubs, restaurants, festivals, and sports arenas should know that they are operating in a safe working environment.

In the case of care workers, where the current vaccination rate is alarmingly low at 76%, the need for proof of vaccination is vital.

For over a year we have faced restrictions on our basic way of life. People are weary of it and patience is running thin. Even with the latest caveat about blood clots, the vaccination programme has provided a way out of this nightmare that we may well not have had.

The general population cannot be held to ransom by opponents of vaccination. Health documentation has been required for diseases like yellow fever for years. Accommodation must be made for people with genuine issues. Nobody would be barred from public transport, public services along with essential shops.

Pregnant women and people with some medical conditions would have that indicated on the app or document they would present. It is argued they could be infectious, opening a loophole in the passport programme. Nothing is perfect but the numbers would be very small.

I’m afraid people with religious objections, people who don’t trust authorities and particularly people peddling anti vax nonsense are going to have to pay for their beliefs by being excluded from the pleasures of normal life. I know this sounds harsh but, in an age, when minority rights are being acknowledged more and more, this is an issue when the majority must prevail.

The government need to make it clear that a vaccine passport requirement would be kept under constant review with the aim of ending it once the virus is reduced to a manageable minimum worldwide.

WELCOME BACK LOUISE.

It is reported that the former Liverpool Riverside MP and leader of Lancashire County Council, Louise Ellman is considering re-joining the Labour Party.

She resigned in 2019 at the height of the row over anti-Semitism when Jeremy Corbyn was leader. Ellman is cautious, urging Sir Keir Starmer to do more, but her instinct seems to be to re-join. This would provide Labour some good news as it faces a difficult round of local elections for the party.

What is required to win back its natural base is to better represent the concerns of ordinary people instead of a kneejerk reaction to support every minority cause.

I have in mind the withdrawal of an election leaflet by the Warrington North MP Charlotte Nicholls. She had pledged to campaign against traveller incursions into her constituency. Following accusations of racism, she apologised. Why? Most councils have official traveller sites but still people suffer from “travellers” invading open spaces leaving a trail of rubbish and disruption behind them.

This has nothing to do with disrespecting the genuine gypsy community and everything to do with recognising people’s right to a quiet life. Labour should be on their side, not the woke side.

NO CLOSER TO A UNION.

Those of you who are kind enough to read my blogs, will know how opposed I was to us leaving the European Union. My belief in an ever-closer union, with the UK in it remains, but the chances of that happening have gone from remote to almost impossible following the Covid crisis.

The EU believes in doing things together and wanted to avoid vaccine nationalism within the bloc when effective jabs became available. The problem with action in solidarity is that it can take time to come up with solutions. An exception should have been made in this case. The political leaders should have told the Commission to act at speed to secure vaccine supplies.

Instead, they were slow, then complained when AstraZeneca honoured a contract placed first by the UK, then cast doubt on the efficacy of the vaccine and are now facing fresh total shutdowns as Covid 19 spreads once again.

The thing that has angered me most is the criticism of AstraZeneca. Some argue that the pharmaceutical industry should be nationalised because of its importance to health. I fear the long term, and often frustrating search for new drugs, would not pair happily with politicians unable to look beyond the next election. Anyway, AstraZeneca was a private company that pulled out all the stops and lost millions of pounds in potential profits to meet the emergency. Of course, they were morally obliged to act in the face of a global pandemic, but they don’t deserve EU politician’s criticism. It has been reported that some people in the leading drug companies are saying “never again”. I hope that is not true, but it is understandable.

Anti-EU politicians in Britain must be allowed their hour of gloating over the bloc’s discomfiture, but the government’s brilliant success with our vaccination programme, shouldn’t be used to widen the gap with Europe. We still need a measure of goodwill to iron out the many trade issues that remain unresolved after Brexit.

DEVOLUTION ANYONE?

Where are we on English devolution? If you watch the Downtown Den, you will have heard different views from our recent guests.

Steve Broomhead is the Chief Executive of Warrington Council. He’s been waiting for years while Whitehall dithers over plans to create a Combined Authority (with or without an elected mayor) for the town and Cheshire.

He told us that centralisation has returned. He cited how local authorities were bypassed over track and trace and claimed the “tyranny of bidding” had returned with the Towns Fund. He means by that, that rather than decisions being made locally, councils must elbow each other out of the way to impress ministers in London to give them cash.

Tom Bloxham, the boss of Urban Splash, on the other hand believes devolution is still on course. His evidence was the moving of government jobs to the north and the success of elected mayors.

We must hope for more progress on devolution after the local elections. Meanwhile have a cracking Easter.