Len Rum said:
Len Rum said:
The perfect fumble said:
Osborne's words are cheap, I'll start celebrating the beginning of a "Northern Powerhouse" when I see the investment necessary to bring it about.
Is there any new money in this "Northern Powerhouse" or is it just the same money being regurgitated from Westminster to the Cities?
Manchester seem up for it ( despite their budgets being slashed again), but could Salford apply for it or any other City for that matter who fancied a piece of the "action" transferred from Westminster. These Cities could of course "blow" the money even worse than Westminster!
The good thing about this policy is that although it was a Tory sound bite which didn't really register at the election, we will now have five years to see if it really works.
At the moment it looks like a idea dreamed up by "Jeffrey" in the first flush of post electoral success. Without "new money" in five years time it will probably have been overtaken by other events and completely forgotten about.
My question answered by the Financial Times regarding the Northern Powerhouse:
"The prize on offer for devolved city administration is not financial but attitudinal .
Funds for health, housing and skills will shrink for years to come.
Far from portending a shower of new money devolution means ceding control over
and responsibility for where the axe will fall"
Nice one George.
You're right, there's no money.
This is the latest wheeze in a long tale of devolved power that never happens. Back in the day, John Prescott tried to set up regional assembles to mirror for the regions the "governments" they have in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland. There would have been regional assemblies, mayors and regional Development agencies. It came to nothing as it faltered at its first hurdle in the North East, it resulted in a few cities having mayors, no regional assembles and the disbanding of the regional development agencies. People just saw it not as "liberating" but as another layer of government and fat cat bureaucracy.
The Tories are not keen on regional assemblies, they like to play the England card as a counter to nationalism elsewhere in these Islands, it means they can also project our English national identity as kind of homogeneous Daily Mail, conservative, southern counties Morris Minor driving bloke, a bit Nigel Farage really, it's a con, I wince when they talk about speaking up as the authentic voice of England, which is their little england interpretation of our national identity dreamed up on a fag packet at some drinking hole in Westminster.
So, we have this dogs dinner proposal, if you can call it a proposal, of devolved power to spend shrinking budgets, which are still dictated by Westminster, but only if the cities chosen elect mayors, there'll be an election, but in our case that means not much more than the head of Manchester City Council playing musical chairs and then sitting down as our new mayor.
Is this exercise entirely cynical? You'll have to make your own mind up.
About the only thing that makes sense is that these City "Statelets" need, at the very least, some time to set up new procedures to decide how money is spent and where it goes, don't underestimate the size of the new local bureaucracy that will blossom in the North West empowered to spend money as "we see fit" to meet "our local priorities"
It is not devolution in any meaningful sense, the real power is retained in Westminster and specifically the Treasury, Will it result in a Northern Powerhouse? As of itself no. In a nutshell that would require a policy to join the dots in the region. Such a policy exists, there is a great deal of research done on why the area stretching from Sheffield to Liverpool, even Preston and back to Leeds could be an economic powerhouse, a population over 12 million or more, the single largest concentration of population outside London, but to use a phrase oft heard in regional development it would require massive infrastructure investment to "facilitate" all those capitalist juices flowing......roads, rail, broadband, airports, education, enterprise hubs, centres of excellence the list goes on, this stuff is not rocket science, there are plenty of examples of it working elsewhere, all over the world, a kind of "build it and they will come" philosophy.
Is this what is on offer? You decide.
