Tag: London

50p TAX PROMISE PLAYING WELL IN WYTHENSHAWE

WYTHENSHAWE BY ELECTION

 

 

Business needs to get the message, ordinary people are angry.

 

I was at the meeting in London on Saturday when Ed Balls committed Labour to a 50p income tax rate for those earning over £150,000 a year. Before I could get the train dear old Digby Jones and Curry King Gulam Noon were spluttering about Labour lurching to the loony left.

 

Two days later RBS reveal the latest £3bn bill that we have to pick up for bankers disgraceful behaviour .

 

Now I know business and banking are different activities, but the continuing banking scandals are eroding people’s confidence in capitalism and certainly putting them in the mood to soak the rich.

 

What is so disturbing about the continuing banking scandal is that the mentality that led to the crash in 2008 has not fundamentally changed. Investigations are on going about the Libor scandal which continued way beyond 2008. In relation to RBS, 80% owned by us, they announced no bonuses this year BUT their chairman Sir Philip Hampton wants a shareholder vote on paying 200% of salary bonuses next year!

 

So it should be no surprise that Labour Leader Ed Miliband isn’t on the prawn cocktail circuit wooing business and he may have nudged a more reluctant Balls into making the 50p announcement early. Miliband sees the way the political wind is blowing and is keen to capture the fairness argument.

 

The first test of whether he’s right or not will come in the Wythenshawe and Sale East by election. Launching the campaign Labour had their Deputy Leader Harriet Harman having a game of indoor bowls at a lifestyle centre and risking headlines about missing the target. In the event the launch went reasonably smoothly for local man Mike Kane who is the party’s standard bearer.

 

FRUITCAKES AND FIBBERS.

 

The main point of interest will be the performance of UKIP. They’ve achieved second place in a string of recent northern by elections and will want to repeat the feat in Wythenshawe.

 

I’m told they are denying my claim that they opened nominations for the by election before the late MP Paul Goggins was dead.

 

Well I have seen an email from Party Director Lisa Duffy saying “Paul Goggins is seriously ill and there may be a potential for a by election, whilst we wish him well we need to plan for eventualities!”

 

People have a laugh with pint swigging Nigel Farage and find his anti establishment rhetoric refreshing. They should also bear in mind the party’s darker side and the fact that their policy of withdrawing from the European Union could wreck our economy.

 

Labour are clearly keeping an eye on UKIP. Their Wythenshawe Voice leaflet gives five reasons why they aren’t the answer, and at a Fabian conference I attended in London last weekend the point was repeatedly made that some working class Labour voters, as well as Tories, were attracted to UKIP’s policy on immigration.

FA CUP LOSING ITS SHINE?

 

I see the Chelsea boss wants to end replays in the FA Cup because of fixture congestion.

 

Excuse me. Teams like mine, Plymouth Argyle, don’t suffer from fixture congestion. As our ex boss Ian Holloway said once, that’s because we’re like a tea bag, not in the Cup very long.

 

Lower division clubs make some badly needed cash from replays and Premier League clubs with their budgets can afford big squads precisely to deal with lots of fixtures.

 

I yearn for the days when teams went to third and fourth replays. That would make yours eyes water Jose!

 

The FA must stand up for the minnows.

 

TORIES CAN BE NORTHERN CHAMPIONS

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I never expected to say this after Eric Pickles destroyed our regional development agencies, but the party has a chance next week to position itself as the defender of the North.

 

The private consensus in Brighton was that Ed Balls was preparing us for a Labour government to scupper HS2. His remarks, and those of other party spokesman after his speech on Monday, went beyond legitimate worries over escalating costs. Balls has got his eyes on the £50bn projected cost of HS2 for other projects. The problem is that in practice that money has been assembled for this scheme and would not automatically be available for health or schools.

 

How depressingly familiar all this is. I thought the Olympics marked an end of timid party squabbling Britain unable to take the big decisions at the right time. In fact we are late with this scheme. The West Coast main line is already over capacity south of Rugby. That’s why places like Blackpool are denied a direct service. North of Rugby HS2 would connect our great northern cities like Leeds and Manchester and crucially allow the existing rail network to improve the service to towns and cities not directly on the HS2 line.

 

There are broadly three groups opposed to HS2. There are the small but vocal number of people directly affected by the line who’s homes are already blighted. We must sympathise with them and compensate them very generously. I know how it feels. My home was demolished for a roundabout in the 1960s.

 

There is the London lobby already campaigning for Crossrail 2 oblivious to the historic scandalous imbalance in transport investment between the capital and the rest of the country.

 

And now we have elements of the Labour Party and others who want to spend the money elsewhere. Their argument ignores the point I made above that £50bn won’t be available to be transferred, and it fails to answer the question of what will happen when we are trying to use a Victorian railway two hundred years after it was built.

 

So in Manchester next week I would suggest the Tories seize the initiative. They will be meeting in a building that symbolises the need to move on when it comes to rail investment. Manchester Central station closed in 1969 and is now their conference centre. The government are investing in the Northern Hub, the Ordsall Chord, and electrifying the Liverpool to Manchester line to dramatically improve services on the existing network across the North.

 

The Transport Secretary Patrick Mcloughlin should burnish his credentials as a former miner and claim that it is the Tories who have the best interests of the North at heart in backing HS2. They certainly need some arguments after Labour’s conference in Brighton.

 

RED ED.

 

I asked last week for some distinctive policies for Labour to campaign on and to be fair we got some. The promise to scrap the bedroom tax and the energy price freeze are the best indications yet of how different an Ed led party is from how his brother would have run things.

 

These are concrete proposals with a definite left wing thrust. The more the energy companies squeal the more will people identify with Ed. The claim that, in response to world market forces, energy prices go up like a rocket and down like a feather rings true with hard pressed families in the North.

 

The question is how broad this appeal will be? Are there enough struggling voters in the South to join Ed’s crusade or will they be frightened off as they were when Neil Kinnock was in charge?

 

 

 

AFTER PRINCE GEORGE, LET’S GET BACK TO THE ECONOMY

If only we could have an election now some Tory politicians might be thinking as they begin their summer break. A new born prince, the heatwave and cycling and cricket success have given our spirits a boost. Most important of all there is a feeling that the economy is turning even in the North which always lags behind the South East because of successive governments’ failure to have an effective regional policy.

 

House prices are edging up here and jobs are being created in the private sector to help absorb the haemorrhaging of public employment. In that connection the news from Bentley in Crewe that they are to build the company’s new sports utility vehicle enhances the North West’s successful car industry alongside Vauxhall at Ellesmere Port and Jaguar Land Rover at Halewood.

 

The key man in all this is the Chancellor George Osborne. He rivals the Prime Minister in importance when it comes to trying to stear the Tories to an outright victory in 2015. This is partly because of his power over economic decision making but also because of his central role in political strategy. For this reason Labour call him the part time Chancellor. It is a foolish charge. It makes sense to have Osborne tied closely to political decision making.

It is Osborne’s belief in concentrating on the main issue of economic recovery that has led to the ditching of “peripheral” issues like plain packet fags and a minimum price for alcohol. Lynton Crosby, the Tory party advisor has taken the hit for this regrettable U turn, but the Chancellor will have been involved.

 

I recently took the opportunity to observe George Osborne up close. He was giving a lecture in memory of that great broadcaster and champion of the North Brian Redhead. To the Chancellor’s credit, he spoke a lot about Brian and didn’t use the occasion for a bog standard political message.

 

He acknowledged the importance of having a northern constituency (Tatton). He told us his daughter had just been made Rose Queen at her school at Wildboarclough in Cheshire and that he was aware that things looked different from a northern perspective. That was certainly Brian Redhead’s view, Mr Osborne told his audience He missed out on the editorship of the Guardian because he refused to move south with the paper. For a long time he co-presented the Today programme from Manchester until being forced to join his colleagues in London. I used to join him on the train north on a Friday and he always said he was glad to be coming home.

 

Osborne concluded by observing that the North was not a monolith and should not be stereotyped. Although Redhead had worked in Manchester, he was born in the North East and lived in the Peak District. The Chancellor claimed that Cheshire had more private sector jobs than London.

 

It was an interesting and different sort of speech from a man that it is not easy to warm to. What will matter in the next two years however is not being liked but keeping the economic recovery going as interest rates begin to rise.

 

Follow me at www.jimhancock.co.uk

 

 

ON ILKLEY MOOR BAHT HS2

 

HIGH SPEED RAIL

 

At a meeting at the Yorkshire Show earlier this month, the HS2 project was apparently given the big thumbs down. Perhaps Dales farmers have more pressing things on their minds, but it does illustrate that this £40bn project is dividing opinion across the North.

 

The report on opinion across the Pennines was given at the annual get together of the North West CBI and MPs where Dave Watts, the St Helens North MP pointed to the escalating costs and said the project was “masquerading as a northern scheme”. This reflects fears that the huge investment in one project could be used as an excuse not to fund other infrastructure schemes across the North.

 

But Blackpool Tory Paul Maynard is a fan. He told the assembled business people that cities linked by high speed rail had prospered. Although a supporter he said reduced journey time was not the key reason he was backing HS2. It would increase capacity on the West Coast Main Line (WCML) something he was particularly in favour of. Maynard said his campaign to get a direct train service from Blackpool to London was currently being blocked because of lack of capacity on the WCML south of Rugby.

 

Maynard also criticised the tone of the High Speed rail Campaign who have recently launched a “your jobs or their lawns” attack on wealthy objectors to the line in the Chilterns. The Tory MP preferred positive campaigning for further transport investment in the North. Now that we’ve got the Northern Hub rail improvement scheme based on Manchester, we should be thinking what the next project should be. Maynard pointed out that this was the way Boris Johnston approached things. The Mayor of London was already demanding Crossrail 2.

 

Other contributors to the discussion included Alan Rigby, Head of Corporate Banking at HSBC. He felt the two hour journey was just about right for people with work to do on laptops while Len Collinson believed that technology would reduce the need for people to physically meet.

BANK LENDING.

 

This topic is being debated everywhere and our gathering held at the magnificent and expanding Chester Zoo, was no exception. Andrew Miller is the MP for Ellesmere Port. His Commons Science committee is about to publish a report entitled “Bridging the valley of death”. It conjures up the nightmare for many SMEs in their search for funding. Miller will be calling for better links between the entrepreneur, funders and universities.

 

Paul Maynard came to the defence of bankers saying they had to apply different criteria in the post 2008 world. They were being ordered to lend and build up their reserves at the same time.

 

Alan Rigby of HSBC said the problem sometimes lay with SMEs. Their bids could lack knowledge of their real needs. Banks are not always the answer. Equity options were often better.

 

NORTHERN REVOLUTION PART TWO.

 

Downtown’s recent discussion on how the North should be governed was taken up at the Chester meeting. Dave Watts once again condemned the abolition of Yorkshire Forward and the North West Development Agency. He hinted that Labour might restore them but I had to point out that senior shadow ministers had already said they would live with the patchwork of Local Enterprise Partnerships.

 

However there seems to be all party support emerging for some overarching northern council to tackle issues like transport, the economy and skills. Conservative Paul Maynard favoured this approach.

 

On the economy in general there was a feeling at the meeting that the corner is being turned which possibly explains the resurgence in Tory morale at Westminster recently. Ed Miliband will need to get his row with the unions over quickly to try and re-establish his opinion poll lead which has evaporated.