Tag: Manchester

“NO MONEY LEFT”- NOW TAKE US SERIOUSLY

Liam Byrne might have thought he was being funny leaving a card on his desk saying there was no money left as he left office as Labour’s Chief Secretary to the Treasury. Actually Liam, it was arrogant, poor politics and sums up why people might not vote Labour back to power in 2015.

However the polls are looking good for Ed Miliband as he arrives in Manchester and people are starting to take Labour seriously again. So this week’s conference needs to give us some idea where the party stands on the major issues of public finances and growth.

Rachel Reeves now shadows Liam Byrne’s old job and made an impressive appearance at a Downtown event in Liverpool a year ago. What we need from her and Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls is not a detailed budget but some financial principles.

All political parties are already looking to the post 2015 years. George Osborne wants £10bn more cuts. Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats made it clear at their conference they won’t be bound beyond 2016. What will Labour do, reverse such cuts or stick with them? The public sector unions are waiting for an answer in Manchester.

Public sector reform is looming as a massive issue. Blair said he had scars on his back when he wrestled with this issue. But the economy in 1997 was very different from now. Councils and the health service are going to have to do things differently. Will we hear Labour’s meaningful thoughts on this in Manchester?

What Labour won’t need if they get back to power is a rerun of the Blair/Brown feud in the shape of the two Eds. Shadow Chancellor Ed is prone to defend Gordon Brown’s record. Ed Miliband points out that Labour presided over widening inequalities. The rivalry isn’t intense yet but the potential is there.

LABOUR AND THE LIB DEMS.

While I was in Brighton, I attended some meaty fringe meetings. Meaty in the sense that the Lib Dems were trying to get to grips with two key issues for the future. Do they disengage from the Coalition at any point and what are the prospects of partnering with Labour after 2015?

On unzipping the Coalition, Tim Farron was not a fan. He’s the Party President and I think a potential leader. The Westminster scribes write him off probably because he comes from the North and will always look a bit young. Farron told a fringe meeting that breaking up the Coalition would just let Tory Ministers in and would lead to the accusation that the Lib Dems were unreliable allies who couldn’t stay the course.

Caroline Lucas, the Green MP for Brighton was at the fringe and felt the Lib Dems should get out fast. The cuts were bringing real hardship to the most vulnerable in our society and the Lib Dems were doing serious damage to their reputation by staying in the Coalition she asserted. Making the Tories less nasty didn’t do it for her.

Lord Chris Rennard who cut his teeth in Liverpool politics in the 1970s was against breaking up the Coalition but did believe Lib Dems had to differentiate themselves in the next two years.

Another fringe looked at the possibility of a deal with Labour if there is another hung parliament. Here in the North it’s easy to think that the Lib Dems are natural allies of Labour and what we are witnessing now is an aberration. But down south many rural Lib Dems lean to the right. Nevertheless Labour’s Lord Adonis and MP John Cruddas got a warm reception at the fringe I attended on the prospects of a future Lab-Lib Dem Coalition.

Adonis confessed he wished Labour had introduced the Lib Dems’ pupil premium but overall felt the premise on which the Coalition was founded was shattered. The Tories had got their austerity cuts but the Lib Dems had not secured the constitutional reform they craved.

It was left to former leader Ming Campbell to make the wisest point. Lib Dem and Labour politicians might be texting each other and getting on well but the whole thing could founder on policy.

Quite rightly Ming cited Labour’s political opportunism that had wrecked Lords’ reform. It was a policy Labour had been committed to for years and yet they were prepared to scupper the legislation over the number of days needed for debate in the Commons.

By the way, let’s not hear any more about the southern venues being much more congenial for party conferences from a weather point of view. Blackpool strength winds and Manchester volumes of rain poured down on us.

“A CLUB WILL GO BUST”

How many times have you heard that forecast as the football season gets underway? We all know that the financing of football is crazy. We all know that the forthcoming season will produce stories of clubs tottering on the brink of oblivion. But it never happens does it?

I say never. Maidstone United seems to be dead and buried but Accrington Stanley and Aldershot have risen from the grave and Portsmouth stagger on. Fan loyalty comes to the rescue when all the red financial lights are on.

But could Portsmouth or even Blackburn Rovers go out of business for ever? A recent Downtown seminar on football heard the forecast repeated that this season one or more of our clubs will bite the dust.

That wasn’t the only startling forecast by Alan Switzer; Director in Deloitte’s Manchester based Sports Business Group as he presented the company’s annual review of football finances.

He also believes UEFA are serious about enforcing their financial fair play rules. The burning question here is would UEFA devalue the Champions League by telling Manchester City, for instance, that they can’t play in the 2014/15 competition if they are not breaking even?

Alan believes there might be some leniency if the direction of travel is right and developments around youth academies will be exempt. However he is in no doubt that UEFA are determined to bring an end to the precarious arms race that is afflicting so many clubs.

Deloitte’s figures are staggering. Premier League average salaries are over a million a year whilst in Division Two it is£47,000. Soon the Championship play off match will be for £150m; even Sky won’t need to hype that! The Premier League wages to turnover ratio is 70%. Most significantly profit levels are flat.

Why the alarm with the new Sky/BT deal coming along worth £3 billion? It may be an opportunity for clubs to put their finances in order, but that would be a triumph of hope over experience. It seems more likely that the poor old fans will see their viewing subscriptions soar up in order to put even more money in players’ wallets.

Alan Switzer produced a graph showing that success was linked to the money clubs spent. There are exceptions like Blackpool’s glorious adventure but generally you get what you pay for.

Is there a tipping point where Sky won’t be able to milk the fans anymore? The seminar heard that increasingly pubs are struggling to pay to show the matches.

The big kick off will soon be with us, but first it’s wall to wall Olympic Games.
North West companies have benefited from Olympic orders. Watson Steel of Bolton, Ainscough cranes from Wigan and Glasdon recycling based in Blackpool being among them. But let’s not kid ourselves it’s London and the South East, the region that least needs it that is benefiting most.

However let’s hope it all goes well and reflect on the fact that without the success of the Commonwealth Games in Manchester ten years ago, none of this would be happening.

LORDS OF THE NORTH

I’m not as bothered that the ancestors of some current peers are bastard sons of Charles the Second than that so many of them come from the South East of England.

It’s a fact that the vast majority of the 826 members of the House of Lords are either from that corner of the country or live there now.

This means that most members of the upper chamber who play a crucial role in our law making know little or nothing about our neck of the woods, so roll on regional peers.

The way in which a reshaped House of Lords will be elected has received little attention from the Westminster Village journalists. That’s not surprising as most of them are from the London area.

However the bill to be debated on Monday contains plans that could give a real voice to the North. 80% of the new house will be elected by proportional representation. These new democratic Lords will sit for one 15 year term and they will be elected from the regions of England. So the North West, North East and Yorkshire will be able to elect representatives who know about our patch and its people.

This proposal will also have the advantage of reasserting the concept of the North West of England. The Coalition has spent two years comprehensively wiping regions off the map. Now they are beginning to realise the usefulness of uniting Cumbria, Lancashire, Cheshire and the great cities of Liverpool and Manchester. Better together indeed.

When the time comes we will need to make sure that independent people have a real shot at getting elected. The main political parties will choose their candidates on a list and depending on the votes they get, their peers will be elected in the same way as we choose our members of the European Parliament.

It is a system that locks out the public in favour of party cabals so we will have our work cut out to get independent voices to beat them, but that’s not for now.

What is immediately required is support for the government in getting the Lords reformed. It currently looks as if the Coalition Government is faced with a Coalition of political opportunists and peers with self interested reasons for seeing no reform at all.

All parties are split. The Lib Dems are most in favour but watch some of their representatives in the Lords who may not be too keen to lose their seats. A large number of Tory backbenchers are against for various reasons. There is a group following in the tradition of their predecessors 100 years ago who were prepared to draw the monarchy into politics as they fought against Lords reform. Others are spoiling for a fight with the Lib Dems who are most committed to the measure.

Then there is Labour who are in a mood of dangerous opportunism. They have been in favour of full Lords reform since Kier Hardy (their founder) was a lad. However they can’t resist embarrassing the government by calling for endless debating time on the bill. If they vote with rebel Tories on the motion which decides how long Lords Reform is going to be debated, it could effectively kill the measure.

If that happened the North West would be denied a real chance for a voice in this country’s second chamber.

LANCS LABOUR TARGET AND JOE’S CHANCE TO UPSTAGE MANCHESTER

The restless world of politics moves on. With the elections and Queen’s Speech out of the way, it is time to look to the political future of the North West after a busy week.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user johnnyenglish

Two issues stand out. Following Labour’s good night in the district elections in Lancashire, the battle is already underway for the biggest prize of all, control of Lancashire County Council. Next year, it will be the only show in town in our patch, but expect the colourful leader of Lancashire, Geoff Driver, to put up a tough fight.

In the cities Joe Anderson is the unlikely pin up boy of the Tories having delivered an elected mayor whereas Manchester has not played ball. Already Cities Minister Greg Clarke is talking about giving the elected mayor transport powers although it would have to be with the agreement of the other councils on Merseyside. Good luck with that Joe.

With most cities joining Manchester in a no vote, it must have been a distinct possibility that Liverpool would have given a thumbs down too. So Joe Anderson’s move to get the council to bypass the referendum retains the whiff of a coup.

What will matter in the long term is if the handful of elected mayoral cities like Middlesborough, Bristol and Liverpool really do benefit from their Downing Street meetings with David Cameron or if they come to look like odd experiments in Town Hall governance that have done no better than the refusniks like Manchester and Birmingham.

There is speculation that the government is still toying with the idea of city region mayors if people want it. They should have legislated for that in the first place giving the conurbations real power. Instead they were vague on the powers of mayors and resorted to referendums which are not an effective way to make constitutional change. People don’t care enough about such issues and just use them to give the government a kicking.

Before we finish with mayors it will be worth keeping an eye on Salford where Ian Stewart was elected. He’ll be joining Joe Anderson on trips to Downing Street but he’s going to have to work hard to win the confidence of officers of the council. There’s also the question of his relations with John Merry, the former council leader who Stewart beat for the post.

Now let’s look at the council results in more detail.

LANCASHIRE ELECTIONS

A good night for Labour particularly in Blackburn with Darwen where they now hold nearly three quarters of the seats. A few years ago they lost power to a mixture of Tories, Lib Dems and For Darwen independents. The latter have disappeared completely, perhaps Darwen feels more comfortable about its relationship with Blackburn these days.

Labour returned to power in Burnley after a decade when first the British National Party and then the Lib Dems challenged its supremacy. The fascists are now off the council completely. The result must be worrying for the town’s Lib Dem MP Gordon Birtwhistle.

Labour also held Hyndburn and gained Rossendale and Chorley where six years ago David Cameron arrived by helicopter to celebrate the Tory triumph.

The Conservatives held off the Labour challenge in West Lancashire but only have a two seat majority over the Labour Party led by the experienced John Fillis.

The only joy for the Liberal Democrats in Lancashire is that they hold the balance of power in Pendle.

GREATER MANCHESTER ELECTIONS

It really was a bad night for the Lib Dems here. Another wipe out in Manchester means they have lost 24 councillors in two years and put a huge question mark under the future of John Leech as MP for Withington.

In Rochdale, once the home of Liberal success under Cyril Smith, internal divisions and the national tide has reduced the party to just 5 councillors on the authority.

The Lib Dems lost their leader in Stockport but remain the largest party largely because of the continuing poor performance of the Conservatives in the leafy suburbs that should be Tory territory. For the party not to be able to take advantage of the Lib Dems at this time should be a cause for a party inquiry.

MERSEYSIDE ELECTIONS

The whole of Merseyside is now in full Labour control for the first time. The party has all the seats on Knowsley,in St Helens the frustrated Lib Dem leader Brian Spencer was led from the counting hall by the police and in Liverpool the party lost a further 9 seats including group leader Paula Keaveney.

But the most spectacular result was in Sefton where never before have Labour had full control. Their victory in genteel Blundellsands summed up a night of triumph.

Political stability has come to Wirral with a Labour majority of eight. With no elections in 2013 the new Labour leader, Phil Davies, has two years to sort out the running of the troubled authority.

So the Coalition has hit the mid term blues. As ever the economy will dictate whether Cameron and Clegg can recover by 2015. Developments in France, Greece and Spain suggest that is far from certain.