Tag: Liverpool

THIS ZOMBIE IS ALIVE AND KICKING!

THE QUEEN’S SPEECH.

Although the last months of the old parliamentary session gave the impression that MPs had run out of things to do, the Queen’s Speech had plenty of content, particularly to help small businesses in the North. Not that parliament’s success should always be measured by the amount of legislation passed. The old maxim “when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change,” is a good one. MPs should debate the bills they do pass more thoroughly with at least two or three days for a second reading.

After the Lib Dem’s poor showing in the recent elections, there was a danger that David Cameron would be left riding into his last legislative term before the General Election with Nick Clegg strapped, half dead, over the back of his horse. Instead the Posh Boys have signalled that they are in it together till the end.

Lib Dem influence remains alive both in measures included, like infant free school meals, and bills left out, such as entrenching the E.U referendum in law.

The key elements in this Queen’s Speech are pension reform and help for business. It is a bold aim of the Prime Minister to make Britain the most business friendly country in the world but the list of support measures is long. Penalties on employers who undercut the minimum wage should help honest business people. Measures to reduce delays in employment tribunals, to tackle red tape (again) and simplify the collection of National Insurance from the self employed will all be welcomed.

The government pledge to help SMEs with access to finance will be met with some scepticism. A survey out this week found that a third of companies planning growth in the North West feared the banks would turn them down.

The pension changes will potentially affect people’s lives into the second half of the century. Giving people new rights over their pension pots and the proposed defined collective contribution schemes(DCCs) are not without their problems. There is a danger we will create a new class of feckless retirees who blow their pension pots and have to rely on meagre state pensions in their last days. In relation to the DCCs proposal, will there be enough employers prepared to band together to create pension funds with the clout to get better returns than the current annuity system? These funds will have to be managed by the financial whizz kids who were responsible for the mis-selling of financial products in the past.

Other measures in this surprisingly meaty Queen’s Speech included a continuing freeze on petrol duty and plans to elect the boards of our National Parks. A whiff of democracy in the Lake District and High Peak is no bad thing.

More controversial is the measure to make fracking easier. Battle will be joined from Blackpool to Salford and beyond.

THE QUEEN OF THE SEAS.

I had the privilege at the weekend to go aboard the first Cunard liner to dock in Liverpool for nearly forty years. The Commodore and crew of Queen Victoria all expressed their delight at returning to their spiritual home virtually underneath the Cunard Building on the Pier Head.

Mayor Joe Anderson, who has done much to get the cruise business back to Liverpool, announced that a restaurant in the Cunard Building is to be named Aquitania. It’s in honour of the longest serving express liner in the company’s history. The Aquitania made its maiden voyage from the port a hundred years ago.

Many people at the event were looking forward as well as back. Max Steinberg, the captain of the International Festival of Business told me it is hard to keep up with the number of events that are being added daily to the global networking event about to get under way in the city.

A CHANCE FOR A REAL E.U. RENEGOTIATION

E.U. TREATY TALKS

While the Lib Dems implode after their disastrous election results, let us look forward to the implications for next year. I have thought for some time that the Tories would be the largest party after the General Election. Labour’s under performance in the North last week has strengthened my view. Therefore there is a reasonable prospect that David Cameron will be in a position to try to renegotiate our treaty arrangements with the E.U.
Up to now I had thought that his demands would be unacceptably high even for our German and Swedish allies. This is because the Better Off Out wing of the Conservative Party is exerting increasing pressure on him. The result would be that Cameron would come back with a weak package of concessions that he would try, and fail, to sell in an in/out referendum in 2017.
However the scale of hostility to the E.U project across a large number of countries is such that the impetus for change has grown and Cameron may be able to get meaningful concessions. These could cover immigration controls, the working time directive, benefit tourism and the “ever closer union” clause of the Treaty of Rome. If all this happens, then the chances of the British people making the disastrous decision to come out of the E.U may be avoided. But don’t hold your breath. Hostility to the E.U is running high in this country.

 

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT RESULTS IN THE NORTH

In the North West it was sad that Lib Dem Chris Davies lost his seat and that the Green’s able candidate Peter Cranie just failed to secure a position. The region would have been better represented by a wider range of MEPs.
Of those who were elected, I have to say the UKIP team impress me. I don’t agree with their policies but Paul Nuttall from Liverpool, the party’s Deputy Leader has developed well as an articulate and friendly spokesman for his party. Then there are the new North West UKIP MEPs. Louise Boers, the former Brookside actress, has a very warm personality and gave her best on the BBC’s Question Time this week alongside Piers Morgan and hard tackling footballer Joey Barton. Finally Steven Woolfe, the party’s economics spokesman will have a hard task when UKIP’s right wing policies on cuts and the health service come under scrutiny.

Labour’s team in the North West are all new and untried. Teresa Griffin has been preparing for this moment for four elections and said all the right things in her victory speech in Manchester Town Hall on Sunday night. Afzal Khan is a very pleasant man, let’s see if he can make a practical difference for the region in Brussels.
The big question mark centres on Julie Ward who has not held elected office before and hails from Bishop Auckland in the North East. She was originally in fourth place on the Labour list and thus very unlikely to win a seat. But the late decision by Arlene McCarthy to withdraw pushed her up to third place. There are fears in Labour circles that she may defect to the Green Party
For the Tories the feisty Jackie Foster starts her third term representing the North West and Saj Karim just held on to his place.
Labour topped the poll in the North West but in Yorkshire and the Humber, it was UKIP. With the controversial Godfrey Bloom gone their brand new MEPs are Jane Collins, Amjad Bashir and Mike Hookem. The other MEPs are all experienced Brussels hands. Linda McAvan and Richard Corbett for Labour and Tim Kirkhope for the Conservatives.

 

LOCAL COUNCIL RESULTS IN THE NORTH

Labour underperformed in key parts of the North, raising serious questions about their ability to win next year. Even the unambitious “35%” strategy to just get across the line is undermined with their 31% projected national vote share in these elections.
Failing to take Trafford into no overall control and to win in West Lancashire where the Mayor will keep the Conservatives in control, were major disappointments. Targets were also missed in Kirklees and Calderdale, although Bradford was won. In Leeds there were no Labour gains to strengthen the party’s majority.
UKIP found the North West hard going with a smattering of seats in Oldham, Hyndburn and Bolton but east of the Pennines the nine gains in Rotherham caught national headlines.
The Greens are now the official opposition in Liverpool, although their leader John Coyne tells me he may not occupy the Town Hall office reserved for him on cost grounds.
Let’s finally turn to the Lib Dems. There has been much reporting of their implosion in Manchester, Rochdale and Liverpool but in Stockport they will still run the council with ratepayers support and in South Lakeland they had no losses at all.
Next stop, the Newark by election on Thursday.

THE END OF URBAN LIBERALISM IN THE NORTH?

 

From the seventies to the noughties the Liberals and then the Liberal Democrats came to occupy the space vacated by the Tories as the opposition to northern Town Hall Labourism. In many cities the Lib Dems actually came to power. Ten years ago I goaded a political commentator into predicting that Labour would lose its majority in Manchester. That didn’t happen and from its peak in the early years of this century, it has been a downhill slide for the Lib Dems.

It became precipitous after the Coalition government was formed in 2010. So going into these local elections Leeds and Liverpool councils have just ten Lib Dem councillors and Manchester nine. They could be all but wiped out as a serious political force in our big cities on May 22nd. That would be very unhealthy for Town Hall politics. With the Tories showing no sign of ending 40 years of impotence in our big cities, the result of a Lib Dem meltdown will be massive Labour majorities and the danger of arrogance and lack of scrutiny that goes with it.

Little attention will be paid to these local elections because, for once, the European Parliament elections held on the same day will command centre stage. That’s partly because of UKIP but also because Labour has already acquired supremacy across most local councils across the North. For four years they have been benefiting from being out of government. Their recovery began in 2010 . Even as Gordon Brown was leaving No 10, Joe Anderson was celebrating Labour taking Liverpool.

So there is less to fight for than usual in our local elections. Nevertheless there will be polls for a third of the seats on the councils that control our great northern conurbations around Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. A third of the seats are also to be contested in the unitary authorities of Blackburn with Darwen and Warrington. A few councils outside our big cities also have elections including West Lancashire, Preston, Burnley and Harrogate.

There are some interesting contests. Trafford rarely lets us down for drama. The only Conservative controlled metropolitan council in the country, the Tories will surely lose their wafer thin grip on power. This will be a disappointment for the recently appointed Sean Anstee, the youngest council leader in the country. West Lancashire can also be expected to fall to Labour. Harrogate may remain a rare patch of blue in the North but the hung councils of Kirklees, Calderdale and Bradford are all being targeted by Labour.

In what is likely to be otherwise a grim night, the torch of Liberalism is likely to remain alight in South Lakeland where Lib Dem President Tim Farron has kept his party in power since 2006. The party is likely to continue holding the balance of power in Pendle where all three parties are almost equal. Stockport is the biggest challenge for the Lib Dems where one net loss could end their power deal with some ratepayers. Labour are the challengers with the Tories continuing to under perform in this leafy part of Greater Manchester. Adding spice to the elections here will be the return of Dave Goddard, the former Lib Dem council leader who was specifically targeted by his former Labour colleagues two years ago.

Overall Labour will find further gains hard to make. The Tories and Lib Dems will be hoping the economic recovery helps them to minimise their losses. All eyes will be on UKIP. They have made no breakthrough in northern Town Halls so far but may benefit from double support as people cast their European and local votes at the same time.

If UKIP do get a substantial number of councillors, it will be interesting to see if they are actually able to actually cope with issues like elderly care and planning.

Next week I’ll be looking at the fascinating European election contests in Yorkshire and the Humber and the North West.

DID ESTHER PAY THE PRICE FOR “GETTING IT”.

 

 

 

MILLER AFFAIR.

 

The Wirral West MP Esther McVey should be in the Cabinet this weekend as the new Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport. She had a career in television, she is from the North, is female and doesn’t have a posh accent. All boxes ticked Mr Cameron, so why didn’t you pick her?

 

Perhaps because while you were foolishly supporting the defiant Maria Miller, Esther McVey was listening to the public and issued some mild criticism of Miller’s perfunctory Commons apology.

 

Cameron isn’t the only one who should be criticised over the Miller affair. I frankly thought Ed Miliband had some gall laying into the Prime Minister. What does Mr Miliband have to say about Sir Kevin Barron. Who he? You may well ask, because he has managed to keep a pretty low profile this past week. Sir Kevin is the chairman of the Commons Standards Committee that decided to slash the amount of the mortgage payment claims that Maria Miller was ordered to repay. He’s also the Labour MP for Rother Valley. I venture to suggest Sir Kevin is less in touch with his Yorkshire constituents than Esther McVey is with her people in Wallasey.

LABOUR’S POOR DEVOLUTION OFFER.

 

It’s not been a good week for Mr Ed. He’s revealed his party’s plan for devolving power to the North. It is very much in line with hints that Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury Rachel Reeves gave at a Downtown event some time ago.

 

She forecast that Labour would not radically alter the hotchpotch of Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), Combined Authorities and City Deals that the Coalition are operating. I agree with the approach of the Hannah Mitchell Foundation who are holding their annual general meeting in Manchester this weekend. The Foundation is committed to democratically accountable regional government.

 

Chair Barry Winter calls Miliband’s proposals to close the North- South divide a sticking plaster, an attempt to breath life into underpowered LEPs and unaccountable joint boards of local councils. Winter says the plan for regional ministers is equally flawed because they are accountable to Westminster. He concludes that while Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and London have significant control of their destinies, the north with 15 million people remains largely tied to Whitehall.

MERSEY MESS.

 

Until we get a regional or pan North of England Council in place, we are going to continue to see the sort of parochial infighting that continues in some of our city regions. I have in mind the Halton, Wirral, Liverpool, Knowsley, Sefton, St Helens Combined Authority. I’m giving its official title donated by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, although to be fair the members will use the working title Liverpool City Region Combined Authority.

 

Its not very combined at the moment because Phil Davies, the leader of Wirral, is chair rather than the Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson. It was reported that this happened because Mayor Joe was late for the meeting. I understand that his physical attendance was neither here nor there. He and ally Peter Dowd (the leader of Sefton) had lost the vote at a pre meeting.

 

Let’s hope they can all work together. In the longer term we need elected mayors for the Combined Authorities in Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool with a Council of the North for the big strategic decisions.

 

Cracking idea for Easter. Have a good one.