Tag: elected mayor

LABOUR’S NORTHERN MAYORAL CHOICES

 

DOG’S BREAKFAST.

One senses that whoever wins the Labour leadership contest, they will never become Prime Minister and hold real power. So we must look elsewhere for Labour politicians who will affect our lives in the coming years.

The position of elected mayor for the city regions of Liverpool and Greater Manchester seem a reasonably safe bet. I say that with the important caveat that all Labour strongholds in the North may soon come under a challenge from UKIP. But presuming the new leader of UKIP hasn’t had time to get his/her ducks in a row, the two Labour politicians currently being chosen in party ballots in Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region will hold significant power.

Only those two areas will have elected mayors next May. Internal squabbling and a government distracted by Brexit has ensured that there will be no great roll out of elected mayors across the North come May.

Leeds may yet get its act together but it has been a painful process with competing demands for a Greater Yorkshire mayor competing with Leeds more city focussed approach. Then there was a fight over transport powers with North Yorkshire. It appears likely that Leeds will do a deal with Craven, Harrogate and Selby but politics is in the background. Some Tory MPs are pressing the new Communities Secretary Sajid Javid for more Tory districts to be included to prevent an inevitable Labour mayor being elected.

Warrington had the same concern in reverse, that an elected mayor including Cheshire could jeopardise Labour’s control of the town. In Lancashire Wyre district continues to hold out against a countywide elected mayor whilst Chorley wants to become a unitary authority.

It is all a bit of a mess. It is what you get when a government decides on the superficially democratic idea of allowing devolution to grow from the bottom up. It is a recipe for petty rivalry resulting in a chaotic pattern that voters don’t understand. We need regional government with only unitary authorities underneath, but we are where we are, so let’s look at who might win the Labour nominations.

TOPPLING BIG JOE?

Joe Anderson has been Labour’s elected mayor for the city of Liverpool for four years. The independent academic Michael Parkinson recently published a glowing report on his success. He listed Joe’s achievements including persuading a Tory government to devolve powers, the International Festival of Business, and the Exhibition Hall; all done against a background of massive public spending cuts. He had also raised the profile of the city, the central aim of this elected mayor project.

Anderson now wants to be mayor of the City Region and needs to deal with the perception that it would always be Liverpool first and Wirral, St Helens and Sefton second.

That is why Steve Rotheram, MP for Walton, is standing on a platform of “No borough left behind.” He says he will give more priority to the needs of the whole city region. He has remained as parliamentary aide to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn which might go down well with the current Labour membership.

Luciana Berger, MP for Wavertree, is seen as the outsider which is a shame because these positions were meant to see different faces coming to the fore. Her call for fresh leadership following Brexit seems to be falling on deaf ears.

TONY THE MAN TO BEAT.

In Greater Manchester Tony Lloyd is relying on big union support and the fact that he is currently doing the job of interim mayor to see him to the Labour nomination. Dynamic wouldn’t be the first word to come to mind in describing Lloyd’s political style but he has often been underestimated in his climb from Trafford councillor, to MP, to Minister, to chair of the Parliamentary Labour Party before seeing off Lord Smith of Wigan for his current job.

Ivan Lewis (MP Bury South) is bringing dynamism to the race with his challenge that so far the benefits of devolution have not gone far beyond Manchester.

Meanwhile Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham says his Cabinet experience will bring heft to the job. He wants more emphasis on council houses instead of plush flats and is challenging the Prime Minister to clarify her position on devolution. The Everton supporting Burnham is battling a perception that he is not Manc enough for the job.

The results of the Labour candidate ballots will be known in early August.

 

BIG JOE AND TOP MAN TONY FACE CHALLENGES.

 

BRINGING DOWN JOE.

The actual elections for the Mayors of the Liverpool City Region, Greater Manchester and possibly Leeds, won’t be held until next year. However in effect the people who are likely to occupy these posts will be settled this summer. Labour has an iron grip on our big northern cities and unless a spectacular independent candidate comes forward, whoever Labour members choose, will win.

The party’s choices will be made very soon. Nominations close on June 10th and the results will be announced on August 4th. Whoever thought it was a good idea to run these selections when the European Union Referendum was on needs their head examining. Labour Party members should be concentrating on getting out the Remain vote amongst its supporters. Without them the referendum could be lost. I guess it reflects leader Jeremy Corbyn’s lack of enthusiasm for the Remain campaign.

However the battle for the Labour nomination has been truly joined. The Shadow Home Secretary Andy Burnham declared this week for the Greater Manchester job. Meanwhile in the Liverpool City Region, 2 MPs Steve Rotheram and Luciana Berger are set to throw down the gauntlet to Big Joe Anderson. There are also suggestions that Barry Grunwald, the leader of St Helens, might try and rally Labour members who want a candidate from outside Liverpool.

Joe Anderson has just started his second term as elected mayor of the city of Liverpool. He got a glowing report on his first period in office from the boss of the Heseltine Institute, Professor Michael Parkinson. However not everyone shares the academic’s views. Critics believe Joe brings a “my way or the highway” approach to the office. They worry about his ability to reach out to the people of Wirral, Southport and St Helens. They remember his petulance when Phil Davies, the leader of Wirral, was originally chosen as chair of the Liverpool City Region instead of him.

There has been a sense of inevitability about Anderson gliding from one mayoralty to the other and this is what Rotheram, Berger or Grunwald will have to combat.

Grunwald is quite a character, inheriting the feisty tradition of his predecessor Marie Rimmer. If he stands he will need to work hard to get name recognition across the city region, but he may be able to play on the fear that a Liverpool politician won’t represent the interests of the other councils.

Joe Anderson is now likely to have to battle with two MPs in the city. Steve Rotheram is the amiable MP for Walton and was a popular traditional mayor of the city some years ago. He has family and work connections with Knowsley, St Helens and Halton and is close to Andy Burnham. They would form a powerful alliance for a North West version of the Northern Powerhouse. Efforts may be made to depict him as a Corbynista. He is the leader’s Parliamentary Private Secretary but Rotheram nominated Burnham for leader and will want to portray himself as a good Labour man first and foremost.

Merseyside politics is very male and a female elected mayor would send out the sort of positive messages that Sadiq Khan’s election in London has done. Wirral South’s Alison McGovern was thinking of standing but is heavily identified with the Blairite Progress movement and is unlikely to run. So what about Luciana Berger? She is bright and personable but will have to deal with the, no doubt unfair, feeling that she is a posh outsider from London.

BURNISHING BURNHAM.

Sir Richard Leese recently expressed his disappointment at Tony Lloyd’s tenure as interim mayor of Greater Manchester. It is a blow for Lloyd as he seeks the post permanently. Leese is now believed to be backing Andy Burnham.

The Shadow Home Secretary’s decision to enter the contest is significant. He has Big Beast status in this municipal contest but it has caused dismay among some Labour supporters for what it says about Labour’s chances of winning the 2020 General Election. Burnham has decided that the only way he can be effective is to run Greater Manchester with no chance of becoming Home Secretary. He represents Leigh and so is not from the Manchester City elite. But will he be any match for the Bernstein/Leese partnership, the powerful Chief Executive/ Leader pairing that has dominated for 20 years?

The other candidate, Ivan Lewis, the Bury South MP, has made it clear that he thinks the devolution agenda has been too Manchester focused and concentrated on economic priorities at the expense of social ones.

It all means a high summer of high drama for Labour Party members in our big conurbations.

 

KNOCKING ON THE DEVOLUTION DOOR

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RED ROSE RISING.

Lancashire and Cheshire want to be major players in the Northern Powerhouse. There is frustration that the project all seems to be about Manchester. I’ve been to Preston and Chester to find out what these areas have to offer the great project to bring power from Whitehall to the North.

Edwin Booth is the dapper boss of that excellent chain of supermarkets, Booths. He chairs the Lancashire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) and is just the man for the job. His quiet charm is what is needed in a county notorious for local authority in fighting. If it isn’t Lancashire County Council v the districts, then its Blackburn and Blackpool v Preston. Then we have Chorley’s bid for unitary status and Wyre refusing to join the bid for a Combined Authority.

Mr Booth told me at a Downtown event last week that he is confident Wyre will come on side for the devolution bid although, as in Cheshire, the stumbling block could still be the government’s insistence on an elected mayor despite the more rural nature of these areas.

The LEPs are supposed to be driven by business with local councils playing a supportive role. The trouble was at the beginning the government were so vague about their structure and purpose when they were set up that councils were often forced to play a major role. Edwin Booth told the Downtown meeting that he soon hoped to detach the LEP from County Hall in Preston. There is speculation that he might take the council’s officers involved in partnership matters with him.

Booth is keen on good relations with Manchester and wants to improve connectivity to the M62 but he is also concerned about transpennine connections further north. He wants a new bridge across the Ribble near Preston but above all he wants to raise the county’s prosperity which is 75% of the national average. Enterprise Zones are up and running in places like Salmesbury and Blackpool, Fleetwood is next.

Booth sees the Lancashire LEP as an agent of transformation using city deal and growth funds but would like powers over skills training in secondary schools. The government’s offer at the moment only covers post 18s, when many argue it is too late.

CHESTER’S LEGIONS ON THE MARCH.

The Chester Forum at the impressive MBNA headquarters heard the Northern Powerhouse (NP) described as a sham by property developer Guy Butler who heads the city’s Growth Partnership. He was concerned that the NP was a distraction to cover for the fundamental change going on in local authority funding. The idea is that central grants will cease and councils will be able to keep all their business rates. It is a scheme that will massively benefit London whilst northern councils with much lower property values will suffer. Butler also wondered whether Chester should be part of the NP or should see itself as a hub for an area including North East Wales with its significant employment centre around Airbus in Broughton.

Phillip Cox, the CEO of the Cheshire and Warrington LEP was in no doubt that the area was part of the NP. The fastest growing LEP in the North, Cox pointed out that more people travelled into the area than out. The idea that the sub region was a dormitory for Manchester was a myth. As in Lancashire talks on a devolution deal continue, but once again the issue of an elected mayor may prove a stumbling block.

Sam Dixon, the new Labour leader of Cheshire West and Chester Council made an impressive début speaking out about the disruption that would be caused to local government by a Brexit vote. Rules on shared Town Hall services were in EU directives that would all have to be rewritten, and furthermore the LEP had received £142m in regional development grants.

So on the flanks of the Northern Powerhouse, the debate remains lively about its future.

 

LEESE LASHES LABOUR MAYOR WANNABES

 

For most of his twenty years as Leader of Manchester City Council, Sir Richard Leese has avoided personal attacks in favour of a sometimes dull concentration on making Manchester the city it is today. He was never my go to person for a juicy quote or a bit of inside gossip.

So it is truly astonishing that he has used a blog finally confirming that he doesn’t want to be the elected mayor of Greater Manchester, to attack two of his Labour colleagues who do. His blog contained a list of reasons why he didn’t want the job but it was in an email follow up to Labour group colleagues that he reportedly let rip. His targets were the current Labour interim mayor Tony Lloyd, and the Labour MP for Bury South,Ivan Lewis. Both are running for the Labour nomination.

The BBC’s North West Political Editor Arif Ansari revealed the contents of the email and reports Leese telling colleagues that Lloyd had been an excellent MP but as interim mayor “had shown a lack of vision, drive and leadership.” Ivan Lewis “had strengths” but Leese “would take some convincing that twenty years in parliament was adequate preparation for the position of elected mayor.” Ouch! Leese says the Labour candidate should be twenty years younger and a different gender.

That seems to rule out sixty year old Hazel Blears. I don’t know if the former Salford MP wants the job but she is the most credible woman I’ve heard mentioned. At a recent Downtown event I questioned Leese on his future and he floated the gender issue as well as the possibility that the Labour candidate might reflect the multi cultural nature of Greater Manchester. So let us hope that Leese gets his wish and Labour do look beyond the usual suspects for a candidate.

Meanwhile we must return to the possible reasons for Leese deciding not to stand, to sneer at the value of the post and attack his Labour colleagues.

It may be that Lloyd, who was the MP for Stretford, and Lewis who sits for Bury South are seen by Leese as “out of towners”. Manchester City Council has historically hated having anyone meddling in their affairs be it the Greater Manchester Council from 1974-86 or the North West Development Agency more recently. The Greater Manchester Mayor is probably seen in the same way, although steps have been taken to make him/her the eleventh member of the team of ten councils. It may also be that Tony Lloyd made himself unpopular in some circles when he defeated Lord Smith of Wigan for the interim post. Many felt Smith “deserved it” for his years of work on keeping the Greater Manchester family on the rails during the devolution discussions.

It was no secret that Leese has been lukewarm about the post for a long time despite the fact that his outstanding work as Leader of Manchester had been recognised across business and in government. But now his actual reasons are clear and they almost amount to the assessment of the position of the American Vice Presidency by one of its holders, John Nance Garner. He said it wasn’t “worth a bucket of warm spit.”

Leese doesn’t go that far but says in his blog that he would rather be having a pint in his local than be selling Greater Manchester to investment funds. He would regard being elected mayor as a “step down” from being leader of the city. He concludes that his current post is “infinitely more exciting than anything being Mayor of Greater Manchester has to offer”.

That signals that Richard Leese will be around for a while in Albert Square. His relationship with the Mayor of Greater Manchester will be interesting.