Tag: UK

SCOTLAND: THE GAME’S AFOOT!

Alex Salmond will be hoping that the Commonwealth Games now under way in Glasgow will help his flagging campaign for Scottish independence.

But just before the sporting contest got started I had a chance to catch up with him on his last foray into England before referendum day. Salmond seems to like Liverpool. Last year he got a great reception in St George’s Hall when he shamelessly played to Scouse antipathy to London by saying Scots and northerners all suffered from remote government from the capital.

He was at it again last week but the difference is the game’s afoot big time with the referendum now just eight weeks away. The Scottish Labour Party had brought down a red double decker bus with Vote No slogans all over it and parked it outside St George’s Hall. Batteries of TV cameras were in attendance along with BBC luminaries like Alan Little and Laura Kuenssberg.

He was speaking to a smaller audience of northern business people but the message was the same; Scotland and the North suffer economically from centralised government. He prayed in aid the former Liverpool Walton MP Eric Heffer who he claimed supported a young Alex Salmond in his efforts to get Scottish independence in the 1970s. Heffer’s successor Peter Kilfoyle seemed to be of the same mind. He told me he’d been on the Mersey Ferry earlier with Salmond who’d got a warm reception from the passengers. “If I was in Scotland, I’d vote for independence” declared Kilfoyle.

Salmond’s speech consisted of a battery of statistics designed to prove his case for independence but he also sought to address a growing anxiety that we in the North are going to lose out between a powerful Scotland and a dynamic South East of England. He had plans for high speed rail connections between the North and Scotland and wanted northern business people to cooperate in a cross border forum.

The Chancellor has made it clear that there could be no shared currency after independence. Salmond continues to insist that Mr Osborne is bluffing. It is the greatest weakness in his case and one that could be decisive for wavering Scots.

I have always believed that Salmond’s real project was to get the maximum amount of devolved power without full independence. I reminded him that he had wanted a third question on the ballot paper to accommodate this. He denied my suggestion that this showed a secret lack of confidence by the Scottish Nationalists that they could achieve the ultimate prize.

The three main UK parties have all promised further devolution of tax raising power if the Scots stay in the UK, so I suggested to Mr Salmond he would be a winner whichever way the vote goes. He replied that you can never trust the promises of English politicians.

The Commonwealth Games will fill the Scots with pride in what they can do for themselves. This will be followed by commemorations of the start of the First World War when Scots played a noble part in fighting alongside the other nations that made up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Then the Scots will vote.

WELL DONE WIRRAL!

Over 200,000 golf fans attended the Open at Hoylake with Phil Davies, the leader of Wirral Council and the Liverpool City Region, telling me £75m had been spent in the local economy.

Wirral Council staff were busy lobbying international guests about economic projects ranging from offshore wind to the massive Wirral Waters redevelopment. They are hoping for a major announcement shortly about a car components plant at the end of the M53 to service Halewood, Ellesmere Port and Crewe.

Along with the International Festival of Business promoted by Liverpool Council, our local authorities have done their best to promote the city region to the world this summer.

NATION DISCOVERS ESTHER!

There had been so much focus on the Prime Minister bringing more women into the government that it was inevitable the papers would focus in on Esther McVey.

OK perhaps she did milk the photographers’ attention, lingering a little too long on the No 10 doorstep, but the MP for Wirral West is very different in many ways from the average Tory Minister.

We are familiar with her life story. Daughter of a scrap merchant turned property developer, she has run her own business and had a career as a television presenter. With her Liverpool accent, she’s down to earth with the people she meets.

She’s still in her first term in parliament but has had four promotions from parliamentary private secretary to junior minister, Minister of State and now attending Cabinet when her ministerial responsibilities at the Department for Work and Pensions are discussed.

It’s a shame she wasn’t given a full Cabinet place, perhaps replacing Michael Gove at Education, but Esther McVey is now clearly the second most senior Tory in the North West behind the Chancellor and Tatton MP George Osborne.

But who else is in the government from the North?

Ben Wallace (Wyre and Preston North) has taken a whips job, Crewe’s Edward Timpson remains at Education and ex Trafford Council leader Susan Williams holds a government post in the Lords.

However the drive to appoint women and Tory MPs with an ethnic background has left a raft of male and pale MPs disappointed. I’ve selected six North West Conservatives who could easily have been on the ministerial ladder now. Leading the way are Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) and Jake Berry (Rossendale) along with David Rutley (Macclesfield) David Morris (Morecambe) David Mowat (Warrington South) and Graham Evans (Weaver Vale).

The North needs more voices in the corridors of power, especially after the departure of William Hague. I was genuinely shocked that he wanted to give up one of the best jobs in government leave alone quitting politics altogether next year.

The consequence of that is that we have a new Foreign Secretary who has openly contemplated leaving the European Union. The appointment of Philip Hammond and other changes to the government show that David Cameron is determined to try and win next year’s General Election on a highly Eurosceptic platform.

The Attorney General Dominic Grieve was sacked because he warned against plans for the UK government to limit the power of the European Court of Human Rights.

The almost anonymous Lord Hill has been put forward as the UK’s nominee for EU Commissioner. That’s hardly designed to guarantee us a key economic portfolio. If he is put in charge of paper clips then we can have another Juncker style row which will make renegotiating the treaty even harder.

Then there will be the absence of Ken Clarke from the Cabinet table. He would have made a good Prime Minister but paid the price for his pro European views. Now his wise advise for us not to become obsessed with Europe will be absent from the Cabinet table.

Of course the car crash with Europe won’t happen if Labour win the election, but the anti European populist theme that runs through this reshuffle is likely to ensure that doesn’t happen.

 

GORDON BROWN TO SAVE UK….AGAIN!

I met Gordon Brown this week for the first time since he was Prime Minister. He is in many ways Britain’s Richard Nixon. Both clever men with a passion for what politics can achieve. Each had a towering achievement. Nixon’s was the breakthrough between the United States and Red China. Brown’s was keeping our cash machines open in October 2008 and leading the world as it reeled from the collapse of Lehman Brothers. But both men’s periods in office ended disastrously partly because they saw enemies around every corner, enemies that had to be crushed.

For the last four years Brown has largely disappeared from front line politics. He has a role with the United Nations but is rarely seen at Westminster. Indeed in a speech this week to Commons correspondents he made a joke of it. He spoke of needing a tour guide and taking the new members induction course. Dangerous stuff, many think he should have left the Commons on ceasing to be Prime Minister as Tony Blair did.

But as one reporter observed, little has changed since Brown’s time in No 10. We still have senior Cabinet Ministers at each others throats and special advisers resigning.

Brown was anxious to point out that he wasn’t seeking to return to the limelight except to be “a foot soldier” in the campaign against Scottish independence.

There has been speculation as to why Brown has, so far, kept a low profile in the debate. Perhaps it was because the Better Together campaign is headed by Alistair Darling who faced the “forces of Hell” when as Brown’s Chancellor he accurately forecast the coming economic meltdown in the summer of 2008.

We will see whether Brown the foot soldier can keep from standing on people’s toes in the coming weeks. His suggestion that the Prime Minister should debate with Alex Salmond has not gone down well. The role of the Conservative Party in the “No” campaign is really tricky. Better Together fear that as the prospect of the Tories being the largest party after the 2015 General Election rises, so does support for independence. So David Cameron has the dilemma of wanting to put his Prime Ministerial authority behind keeping the UK united without helping Salmond to claim that Scotland keeps getting governments it doesn’t vote for.

Brown is clearly unimpressed with the Better Together campaign’s tactics so far. He says they need to avoid it becoming a British politicians v Scotland issue. Scottish identity is not at issue, nor is the existence of the Scottish Parliament with more devolution on the way. All that has been granted. What this is about is severing all links with the UK.

Despite the latest polls showing 58% support for “No” against 42% Yes, Brown fears that if we don’t wake up, Scottish independence could still happen.

Gordon Brown was always more sympathetic to Northern devolution than Tony Blair. That enthusiasm has not diminished. He warned this week that there could be more constitutional turmoil, even if Scotland rejects independence, unless English regions are given more power. He regretted that the Coalition had not taken the opportunity to address these issues as well as Scottish independence.

I wonder why that choice was made by David Cameron. It was because the Scots, and the Welsh, get their act together and demand devolution.

That’s what we need to do starting at Downtown’s Northern Revolution conference next month.

NUCLEAR INDUSTRY CRISIS IN NORTH

 

 

The nuclear industry is a vital part of the northern economy, but recent events have cast a shadow over its future.

 

The vote by Cumbria County Council to reject deep storage of nuclear waste and the decision of Centrica to abandon plans to build new reactors in the UK raises major questions for an industry that the North has great expertise in.

 

From the hi tech skills being taught at UCLAN and Manchester University’s Dalton Institute to the “difficult” end of dealing with the waste legacy at Sellafield, from the uranium enrichment plant run by URENCO at Capenhurst to a string of supply chain companies across the North, we are looking at a major industrial asset.

 

There are two major issues. The need to build a new generation of nuclear power stations to avoid a UK energy gap in the 2020s and a solution to the long term disposal of radioactive waste.

 

On the latter issue, the government’s reaction to the decision by Cumbria Council to pull out of the exploration of underground sites seemed remarkably casual. Ministerial reaction was to say the search goes on as if there are a queue of other local authorities across England waiting to host the toxic legacy of 60 years of nuclear power generation.

 

The fact is that Cumbria is the only county in the country where there is the remotest prospect of building a consensus to locate a deep storage facility for nuclear waste. Actually that conclusion needs refining. It is only in West Cumbria, around Sellafield, that there may be public support. Copeland District Council voted to continue exploration and there is talk of them now going it alone.

 

It would require a change in the law as Cumbria County Council is the superior planning authority, but in the national interest this should be explored.

 

Cumbria councillors are facing elections in a couple of months. That brought its own pressures, along with a strategy by some anti nuclear campaigners to “scare the crap out of them”. But the vote still leaves the nuclear waste in place.

 

Now the government should concentrate on exploring for a site in West Cumbria so that this part of the work of the nuclear industry in the north can regain momentum and they should give Copeland Council the guarantee that they could pull out of the project at a late stage. Cumbria councillors claim they were not reassured on this point.

 

Now we come to the other issue which has implications across the economy of the north. After years of burying its head in the sand the Blair government acknowledged that we would need a new generation of nuclear power stations. This was good news for the North and Manchester University was quick to spot the opportunity to start training a new generation of nuclear engineers.

 

But forward momentum has been slow, partly because of the balance of risk to be taken by the private and public sector and the agreed price for electricity generation from the power stations.

 

Centrica’s decision to withdraw means no major UK company remains involved in plans for new nuclear reactors in England. The government point to Hitachi’s purchase of the relatively new UK nuclear power company, Horizon, as evidence of confidence in the UK nuclear industry by the Japanese.

 

For the sake of jobs in the north, we need rapid progress on plans for nuclear power stations and deep storage.