Tag: North West

A SWING TO THE RIGHT

A SWING TO THE RIGHT.

How long will the Lib Dem grass roots allow Nick Clegg to stay in a coalition where right wing Tory backbenchers call all the shots? David Cameron has had to placate them this week and his Lib Dem partners just look on in dismay.

I don’t think enough has been said about the sacking of Ken Clarke, for that is what it is. I know he can still attend Cabinet as Minister Without Portfolio. Without power or influence more like. I’m surprised he didn’t resign outright. For a man who has been Chancellor and Home Secretary to hang on in this way is undignified. It gives a cloak of respectability to what has really happened.

The last Tory with a sane view on our relations with the European Union (and prison policy) has been removed. So now the decks are clear for the vicious circle to accelerate. The anti EU press will continue to mislead the public about Europe, the politicians will respond and before we know it we will be having an in-out referendum. The nation will vote to come out of the EU, then stand by for an economic slump that will make this one look like prosperity.

But back to the reshuffle and further evidence of a swing to the right. The new Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin has been brought in to smooth the way for a third runway at Heathrow which will ignore the strong case to develop our regional airports. Promises of this being the greenest government yet were already withering, and that’s set to continue with Owen Paterson in charge at Environment. By the way hard luck to Liverpool’s Peter Cranie on not getting the leadership of the Green Party this week.

Sayeeda Warsi is another Cabinet Minister who should have made a clean break. The former Tory Chairman has taken a minor job at the Foreign Office. It’s a blow for ethnic minority representation in the government. I liked her down to earth approach and she impressed a gathering of Tory grass roots members meeting in Liverpool recently. It’s a shame.

Tory talent in the North West has been almost totally overlooked by the Prime Minister with the exception of the spiky and talented Esther McVey. The Wirral West MP is a rare asset for the Conservative Party. A media savvy business woman from Merseyside she’s got an interesting first job in government. She’s a Minister at Work and Pensions. The Secretary of State Iain Duncan Smith refused to move and will fight to implement his universal credit benefit system. The Treasury is worried about the new system’s dependence on a vast computer network. We know from past experience that central government and big computer systems mean a big price tag and almost certain failure.

McVey is the only North West promotion. What about Pendle’s Andrew Stephenson, Preston North’s Ben Wallace and Lancaster’s Eric Ollerenshaw. He’s an older politician with good local government experience. Instead Eric Pickles is rewarded for his abolition of the North West Development Agency and more seriously the Audit Commission with an extension of his term. I suppose his value is as a bit of northern rough among the southern posh boys.

FOLLOWING LORRAINE

A source at Jaguar Land Rover tells me that Lorraine Rogers has a new job with them. The former Chief Executive of The Mersey Partnership apparently has two roles. One as a global brand director and another taking care of royal protocol. Zara Phillips is a brand ambassador for the Halewood produced Range Rover Evoque.

Rogers resigned earlier this year as Chief Executive of the Mersey Partnership, paving the way for it to be absorbed into the new Liverpool Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP).

I’m told a local newspaper is currently trying to get Lorraine to spill the beans on how hard it is for women to provide leadership in the macho world of Merseyside politics and business.

Tributes were paid to the work of The Mersey Partnership at the first meeting of the stakeholders in the Liverpool LEP this week.
The LEP is now in the hands of Robert Hough, a man vastly experienced in the politics of the North West.

He faces a big challenge in establishing the Liverpool LEP as the agency best placed to represent the interests of the city region stretching from Runcorn and Southport to Wirral and St Helens.

It’s not an easy task now that Liverpool has an elected mayor seeking to expand his influence. Also on the territory is Liverpool Vision, an agency that many see as the best vehicle to promote tourism across the city region rather than the LEP.

Not that the Liverpool LEP lacks people to exert its influence. Unlike the tiny organisations that run LEPs in Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Cheshire, the Merseyside operation has taken in most of the 55 staff from TMP.

It was therefore ironic that David Frost, the head of the national LEP Network, should choose this occasion to call for better resourcing of LEPs across the country.

When the government recklessly scrapped the North West’s regional structure, they pledged that the LEPs would be free of the costly bureaucracy that, they claimed, was a feature of the development agencies.
But two years on here was Mr Frost telling delegates that LEPs couldn’t drive economic success on a shoestring. Key staff were needed for marketing and research.

I’m sure he’s right that for LEPs in Lancashire, Greater Manchester and Cheshire to become really effective, you do need people on the ground. So business needs to put its hand in its pocket because the public sector is skint.

My quarrel is with the government who thought that such organisations needed neither funding nor people.

Robert Hough’s task as chairman is to get members who signed up for The Mersey Partnership to remain with the new organisation. He told them it would be worth it as the Liverpool LEP concentrates on key sectors like Low Carbon, the Super Port, advanced manufacturing and the visitor economy.

He forecast that new activities could be given
to our LEPs. Lord Heseltine was looking at giving them a role in venture capital funding.

Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson pledged cooperation with 80% of the LEP’s activities but was clear that issues like World Heritage Status were matters for the city alone.

The LEP has to recognise that the name Liverpool is the attack brand on a global basis. The city has to realise that many of the economic engines of the sub region lie outside the city’s boundaries. Unilever and Cammell Laird are on the Wirral; Pilkington’s is in St Helens.

As we say so often politicians and business leaders need to work together across the city region to realise its full potential.

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.

WOMEN IN POLITICS: MORE TO DO

Would Emmeline Pankhurst be proud of the progress that Blair’s Babes, Gordon’s Girls and Cameron’s Cuties have made in breaking the glass ceiling in British politics?

One thing’s for certain the Suffragette leader of a hundred years ago would be appalled that the popular press can still get away with the sexist headlines that so often accompany commentary on the role of our female MPs at Westminster.

Despite women only shortlists and determined drives by political parties to rectify the problem, there is still a lack of women in leadership roles at Westminster and in our Town Halls.

You would expect that the greater the number of women MPs and councillors would lead to more of them emerging into top jobs, therefore the following statistics are worrying.

Men outnumber women 4 to 1 in Westminster, at this rate it will take another fourteen General Elections for parliament to reflect the population it purports to represent.

Only 5 out of 23 cabinet ministers are women. Just 31% of councillors are female and 13% of local council leaders are women.

The Town Hall figures contradict the notion that women find it easier to be involved in local politics. The argument goes that as the activity is local it is easier for women to manage the demands of work and family.

We can all recall some formidable female local government leaders in the North West and more widely. Louise Ellmann, the current MP for Liverpool Riverside, had her most prominent years in politics as leader of Lancashire County Council.

At County Hall in Preston in the 1980s she developed the then pioneering notion that local government could be a partner with business in creating jobs. Lancashire Enterprises was her vision.

Politicians on police authorities have recently been accused of being low profile. That charge could not be laid against Margaret Simey in Merseyside and Gay Cox in Greater Manchester. In the troubled early 1980s these chairs of their respective police committees were more than a match for powerful Chief Constables Ken Oxford and James Anderton.

Turning to the present, Marie Rimmer gives robust leadership to St Helens council, fiercely protecting what she sees as the interests of her town from the potentially overbearing influence of Liverpool.

But these women are the exception. Down the years and across the region the vast majority of Town Hall leaders are men.

When it comes to the Chief Executives of our local councils, the position is very different. Salford,Wigan, Trafford, St Helens, Knowsley and Cheshire East are among the authorities with a woman on top.

The reason for this perhaps gets us to the heart of the problem of why there aren’t more prominent women in politics.

Although Chief Executives work hard, they owe their positions to competitive interview. It’s a process that generally leads to appointment on the basis of ability. Once in post, the employment contract goes a long way to protecting job security.

To become leader of a council, you first have to get selected by your party, then elected to the council, then get elected by your group to the position of leadership. It involves the sort of 24/7 commitment that few women can contemplate. It is also often a very male world of clans, macho politics and the pub.

I realise I am generalising here. I have personal knowledge of men who have taken on domestic responsibilities to allow their partners to pursue a political career, but they are the exception.

Now let us turn to Westminster where some parties have introduced artificial methods to boost the female count. Labour’s women only shortlists and the Tories A-list of candidates being the most promising examples.

In the eighty odd years between 1918, when women first stood for parliament, and 1997 when MPs first entered parliament from women only shortlists, progress was slow. Parliament remained largely male, pale and stale.

However those women that did break through made a big impression. It may be their rarity value that drew the public’s attention but the North West had a remarkable collection of women MPs amid the massed ranks of the men in the post war years.

Leading the way was Barbara Castle. The MP for Blackburn for over thirty years. In her ministerial posts she introduced seat belts, the breathalyser and earnings related pensions. As First Secretary she fought a mighty battle with the unions on curbing wildcat strikes.

She thrived under the patronage of Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson, one of the few holders of that office to actively promote women. She was sacked by Wilson’s successor Jim Callaghan, a product of the male and stale trade union brigade.

Bessie Braddock was elected at the same time as Red Barbara and although she never held ministerial office, she was a major figure inLiverpool politics for thirty years. Gwyneth Dunwoody served Crewe for even longer and made ministers that appeared before her Transport Select Committee tremble. Angela and Maria Eagle have made their mark in the last fifteen years representing Merseyside seats.

On the Conservative side Margaret Thatcher had to battle male prejudice before rising to the top job as did Lynda Chalker in Wallasey and Dame Elaine Kellett-Bowman in Lancaster, one of the last Tory dames to grace the back benches.

It was always said that Conservative women were the main block on female advancement in the party, believing for a long time after it became publicly unfashionable, that a woman’s place was in the constituency helping her male MP husband. That way they got two for the price of one.

The lack of women MPs has been a severe problem for the party that should find it most easy to select females, the Lib Dems. They have 7 women MPs out of 57 and they are all in marginal seats. 2015 could see the party with no female representation at Westminster at all.

Sporadic attempts to introduce quotas or women only shortlists have been thwarted by activists who have argued that such methods are fundamentally illiberal.

Will women make the breakthrough to equality of representation at Town Hall and Westminster? It is difficult to be optimistic particularly because one senses an irritation when the issue is mentioned. There’s a feeling that the matter has been dealt with or not enough qualified women put themselves forward.

The only hope lies in a fundamental shift in the way we do politics. The Bradford West by election showed that there isn’t much enthusiasm for the conventional parties or the way they do politics. Perhaps a breakdown in traditional allegiances will lead to new parties with greater appeal to women to put themselves forward.