THERE WON’T BE A GENERAL ELECTION.

 

 

REMEMBER THE TRUTH ABOUT TURKEYS AND CHRISTMAS

 

There is much idle talk amongst political commentators about a General Election being just around the corner. Why would the Conservatives, who have just been caught out badly with an unnecessary election, risk another one? In May Labour appeared to be way behind in the polls, now they are level pegging and would probably emerge the largest party.

The argument goes that the Tories would have to hold an election if they changed Prime Minister. This is nonsense. Mrs May is looking more confident and cheerful since her coughing fit in Manchester. It wouldn’t surprise me if she sacks Boris Johnson and Phil Hammond in a reshuffle. But let us suppose for a moment that the Grant Shapps of this world haven’t gone away and force a leadership election. In my view the next Tory Prime Minister takes office and carries on. There is no constitutional requirement to go to the country, nor is there any precedent since 1955 when Eden took over from Churchill and went straight into a General Election.

Since then there have been four occasions when the Prime Minister has changed during a parliament. In 1963 Lord Home (the Jacob Rees Mogg of his day) succeeded Harold Macmillan and waited for the scheduled General Election in 1964. Jim Callaghan took over from Harold Wilson in 1976 and served for three years till defeated in a vote of no confidence. John Major succeeded Margaret Thatcher in 1990 and served out the rest of her term before winning the scheduled election in 1992. The Prime Minister most under pressure to seek a fresh mandate was Gordon Brown, but in 2007 he finally decided not to risk it.

Some say the Democratic Unionist Party will renounce their deal with the Tories if the Brexit negotiations require the island of Ireland to be treated as one entity for customs purposes. Possibly, but when will things ever be so good for the DUP again? It will be a long time before they get a billion pounds from a British political party again.

I expect this government to totter on hopelessly divided on Brexit and incapable of a proper negotiation with the European Union. Hopefully there will be a massive change in public opinion on leaving the EU. Then all bets will be off for the future shape of politics in Britain.

THE CATALONIA CONUNDRUM.

I normally have a settled opinion on most political issues but the Catalonia demand for independence really leaves me hopelessly on the fence.

I believe in a European Union where the regions of individual countries have powerful devolved government to bring decision making close to the people and to tackle inequalities like the North South divide. That is why I believed in John Prescott’s model of development agencies held accountable by assemblies.

But regional government should be about those principles of more equal wealth distribution within countries. The Catalan region is the wealthiest in Spain and many supporters of independence don’t want to share their prosperity with poorer areas. In Italy the Northern League has the same attitude to the south of their country.

One thing I am sure of is that using violence against the Catalan people or suspending their devolved powers will solve nothing.

Follow me @JimHancockUK

IVAN THE TERRIBLE HITS BACK.

 

IVAN LEWIS SHOWS WINNING MENTALITY.

The bust up within the Greater Manchester Labour Party over who should be their candidate for elected mayor shows no sign of abating.

Last week Manchester Council leader Sir Richard Leese opined that Bury South MP Ivan Lewis’ twenty years in parliament didn’t qualify him for a job requiring experience of local government. A clearly offended Ivan is now pointing out that he was a councillor in Bury and chair of the Social Services Committee.

Observers remain surprised that Sir Richard Leese chose the occasion of his decision not to stand for the post to indulge in this red on red attack. There are now suggestions that despite his obvious qualification for the Labour nomination, he would not have beaten the current interim mayor Tony Lloyd(former Stretford MP) or Ivan The Terrible (Bury South MP) in the vote. There is apparently a strong desire amongst Labour chiefs in the nine other councils not to let Manchester boss the show.

NORTHERN POWERHOUSE.

So has the Northern Powerhouse (NP) got momentum after all? I wrote critically about the project a couple of weeks ago, so I thought it would be a good idea to go along to a big conference on the subject in Manchester. It was aimed at the business community who need to be convinced that NP is going to mean opportunities for new contracts and growth.

The conference didn’t get off to a great start. The Treasury Minister Lord Jim O’Neill had issued a prepared speech to the press but treated the audience to a defensive ramble about the government’s continued commitment to the NP. He attacked critics who said the North South divide was still widening by stressing it was a long term project. However he did acknowledge a lack of joined up thinking in government evidenced by the “pause” in the electrification of the Leeds-Manchester rail line. The project is now back on track.

The government seem to have taken on board criticism that NP is too focused on infrastructure. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the Chief Inspector of Schools recently warned that NP could be undermined because of poor secondary education in northern schools. Lord O’Neill said this, and the related issue of poor skills, would be addressed in phase two of NP.

John Prescott is a regular at these conferences and never fails to challenge the new orthodoxy that cities alone hold the key to northern regeneration. There he was waving a fading copy of his Northern Way document which, ten years ago, mapped out a vision for strategic thinking across the North. It was scrapped by the Coalition government in 2010 but Prescott pointed out that the recent appointment of ex CBI boss John Cridland as chair of Transport for the North showed the continuing need for strategic thinking beyond the boundaries of smaller Local Enterprise Partnerships and councils.

Prescott retains the belief that local councils will always compete with each other in their own narrow interest. Chief Executives from Leeds Newcastle, Liverpool and Manchester came together for a conference session where they insisted that they were going to set aside parochialism in the interests on NP. We’ll see if that works when a global company is weighing up the merits of locating in rival northern cities in the future.

There were good conference sessions on issues like transport and finance and the large attendance showed that business is taking NP seriously. It is, for sure, the only game in town if we are to get the North competitive with London. Let us hope the government stay focused when all the headlines are about our very future in Europe.

 

THE CHANCELLOR IN THE IRON MAIDEN

 

LABOUR’S DILEMMA.

The Chancellor’s economic bondage fetish continues! During the election he bound himself in pledges not to increase income tax, national insurance and VAT by law. Last night at the Mansion House he pledged a new fiscal framework to achieve permanent budget surpluses.

This is a major development in the finances of the nation. In only seven of the last fifty years have governments run a budget surplus. George Osborne is convening the first meeting in 150 years of the commissioners for the reduction of the national debt.

Business is likely to welcome this determination to tackle the national debt but its political implications are profound. Labour has always believed in the need to run deficits during difficult times to boost the economy and support public services. How will they respond to this? If they support it, the prospect of a Labour Party coming to power with ambitious visions for the NHS, housing and social care will be almost impossible. If Labour oppose Osborne, he will say it is evidence Labour are committed to running deficits and never tackling the National Debt currently running at 80% of GDP.

This move shows the Tories are determined to press home their advantage at a time when Labour is engaged in a tepid leadership election to which I will return in later blogs.

EURO HONEYMOON OVER.

It is a good job the Chancellor is able to divert attention from Tory divisions on Europe. I thought the “better off out” brigade now disguised as Conservatives for Britain might have come to have a little more respect for David Cameron after his election victory. Not a bit of it. We are back to the nineties with these Tory backbenchers making impossible demands on banning freedom of movement in the EU so that they can campaign to get Britain out.

MANDELSON ON NORTHERN DEVOLUTION.

Peter Mandelson is hoping to be elected Chancellor of Manchester University shortly and wants that institution to play its part in the Northern Powerhouse.

During the campaign he has made some painful observations about how Labour was completely outflanked on devolution during the last few years.

Labour council leaders across the North were left with no alternative but to go along with the Northern Powerhouse because of a complete absence of an alternative by Labour. They were reluctant to promise to abolish the Local Enterprise Partnerships but their vision of how the North South divide would be narrowed remained opaque. They should have returned to John Prescott’s vision of regional assemblies holding recreated Regional Development Agencies to account. Only this time they should have given them real powers, like Osborne is giving Greater Manchester.

Mandelson says he was hugely frustrated by seeing the Tories seizing the devolution agenda whilst Labour stood back. The former cabinet minister says Labour had the language but not the policies to rebalance the UK economy.

Labour got this wrong but the Tory plan to allow groups of councils to come together, each with a different model isn’t the answer either to the really big question of how England responds to the call for a federal UK.

 

NORTHERN REVOLUTION: BRING IT ON

On July 4th Downtown is hosting a vital conference to discuss how northern cities like Leeds and Liverpool can accelerate change and economic growth. It is well timed if an event I attended at the Commons this week is anything to go by.

 

The Smith Institute and Regional Studies Association were posing the question “Where next for Local Enterprise Partnerships?” LEPs were set up in the wake of the wholesale destruction of regional structures by the incoming Coalition government in the summer 0f 2010.

 

LEPs were to be slim, local, business led organisations to drive economic growth. The problem was,initially at least, they had little money or structure and their targets were unclear. Over the last three years they have largely been left to get on with it. The result is that across the North of England LEPs have evolved in very different ways.

 

In Manchester and Leeds they have been able to take advantage of the combined authorities of the local councils. Liverpool’s LEP, after a slow start, inherited the infrastructure of the Mersey Partnership. In Cheshire and Lancashire the organisations are smaller.

 

Despite the good work they are doing, the big question remains are they fit for purpose in trying to close the North South divide. The conclusion of the Commons conference I attended was that they are not.

 

As a convinced regionalist I found the discussion frustrating. There was frequent mention of the need for the LEPs to work more closely together to create a critical mass to be effective. The logic points to a need for a strategic organisation across the North to take major decisions on transport, planning and infrastructure. That’s not going to happen under this government or a possible Labour administration who’ve said they will work with the “patchwork quilt” of local structures. How daft is that?

 

Reference was made to a recent Ernst and Young report on direct foreign investment into the UK. There was much rejoicing when the report came out that the North West had seen a 13% rise with Yorkshire not far behind. However the comparable figures for Scotland Wale4s and Northern Ireland were respectively 49%,244% and 71%. What do they have in common? Powerful, well resourced devolved government. Simon Alport Ernst and Young’s North West senior partner concluded that the closure of the Regional Development Agencies may have undermined the performance of English regions. Not may Simon, it did.

 

The Commons conference concluded that the government lacked a coherent regional policy with a bewildering patchwork of initiatives from the Regional Growth Fund to Enterprise Zones, City Deals to community budgets.

 

Andy Pike from Newcastle University believes the government is torn between centralism as it battles austerity and a commitment to localism. The result is that LEPs operate in a world of multiple actors which is time consuming and lacking in accountability.

 

There were other opinions. Nigel Guy from Leeds LEP saw no problem with different LEPs going at different speeds and wanted more power for the City Regions.

 

Blackpool MP Gordon Marsden was sceptical of the argument that powerful City Regions in Manchester and Liverpool could help his town. He recalled a conversation with Manchester Council leader Sir Richard Leese when they were battling over who would have a super casino. Marsden had told him on a good day the “Manchester” effect would stretch to Preston, on a bad day to Bolton but never Blackpool.

 

An important indication of government policy will come shortly in the comprehensive spending review when the Chancellor announces the size of the single growth pot for local devolved spending. Will London let go of enough money to make a difference up North? Don’t hold your breath.