The Northern Agenda Laudable

We're a week on from the local and mayoral elections and the dust is still settling on a set of results which dealt another major blow to Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives.

And it was the election of metro mayors - the political figureheads for big regions like the North East, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire - which made most of the headlines.

But while most Westminster pundits - and Rishi Sunak himself, are preoccupied with what these results mean for the upcoming General Election, there's a lot less attention being paid to the mayors themselves. Who are they, what are their policies and why are people voting for them, if they bother to vote at all? And do they really know how to run their regions better than Westminster?

This week as the new mayors got back to work after the elections Rob Parsons speaks to one of them, South Yorkshire's Oliver Coppard, about why he's prioritising transport in his second term. 

And Rob gets the bigger picture with three brilliant guests:

Jen Williams, Northern Correspondent for the Financial Times, who wrote a great piece last week about how the mayoral elections mark a milestone for English devolution and has taken a particular interest in the affairs of Tees Valley Ben Houchen. 

Gill Morris, executive chair of Devo Inflect, the UK's leading devolution public affairs agency. 

Professor Katy Shaw from Northumbria University is one of the experts who helped write Gordon Brown's commission on the UK's future, setting out plans for sweeping constitutional change, which Labour leader Keir Starmer has promised to implement.


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Rob Parsons reports from a​ sports hall in the town of Thornaby-on-Tees - where he's witnessed perhaps the only bright spot for Rishi Sunak in what ​w​as a miserable local and mayoral election night for his Conservative Party.

​T​he Tories ​look to be on course to lose 500 local election seats in what could be their worst showing in 40 years.​ They were thrashed in the Blackpool South by-election and even managed to lose the mayoral race in Rishi Sunak's backyard in North Yorkshire.

​But there was a silver lining in the form of ​Ben Houchen, described by many as the poster-boy for Conservatism in the North of England, who was re-elected mayor of the Tees Valley region but saw his majority over Labour dramatically cut, ​securing almost 82,000 votes compared with the 63,000 votes received by Labour’s Chris McEwan.  

Rob hears directly from Lord Houchen after his victory and watches a remarkable confrontation between the mayor and one of his main critics, journalist Richard Brooks of Private Eye.

There's also voice notes from local journalists Joseph Timan in Greater Manchester and Susan Newton at the Blackpool South by-election.
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This week Rob Parsons focuses on the parts of the country where millions of us live - the so-called coalfield or ex-mining communities - and find out what the future holds for them.

There's a new report out this week from the Coalfields Regeneration Trust setting out how the areas whose miners used to power industrial Britain are still lagging behind the big cities when it comes to jobs. But crucially they have a vision for how they can catch up, and Rob speaks to Andy Lock from the charity to hear what needs to happen.

Also, there's a week to go until large parts of the North go to the polls on May 2 and there's plenty on the line - not just in places like the Tees Valley and North East which are electing metro mayors but also towns and cities where control of local councils is at stake.

But where are the most interesting races in the North and how much do they matter? Rob is joined by Jonathan Carr-West, Chief Executive of the Local Government Information Unit - a not-for-profit organisation which produces an annual report on the local council elections to watch.
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Which political story should we be paying more attention to: the saga of Angela Rayner's council house in Stockport or that of Lancashire MP Mark Menzies, who is accused of using political donations to cover medical expenses and pay off “bad people” who had locked him in a flat and demanded thousands of pounds for his release?

This week Rob Parsons compares the merits of these two stories with the Liverpool Echo's Liam Thorp. Meanwhile Liam tells us why he believes it was right to identify two local politicians who failed to pay council tax and why 'XL Gullies' are proving a menace to hungry workers in Liverpool city centre.

PLUS: Regular listeners to the podcast will have heard about lots of different examples of the North of England being on the wrong end of stark regional inequality. But it's still shocking to find out there are big differences in the numbers of vulnerable children going into care between our region and other parts of the country.

A new report sets out how one in every 52 children in Blackpool is in care compared with one in 140 across England, while the North of England accounts for just over a quarter (28%) of the child population, but more than a third (36%) of the children in care.

There's a human cost but an economic one too. Researchers for Health Equity North say if the North of England had experienced the same rates of children entering care as the South between 2019 and 2023, “it would have saved at least £25 billion”.

To find out why this is happening Rob speaks to one of the authors of the report, Professor David Taylor-Robinson from the University of Liverpool.
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This week​,​ Rob Parsons speaks to an author who's asked the question: How did the North become a place of lost potential and broken dreams? And what can be done to make it one of the most dynamic and forward-looking places in the world once again?

Alex Niven is the man behind the book The North Will Rise Again, which covers the colourful adventures of its inhabitants, the expansiveness and optimism that defines Northern culture,

A native Northerner himself, having returned to his home city of Newcastle with his family in the last few years, Alex explores issues like radical regionalism, Northern identity austerity, the impact of Brexit, the collapse of Labour's 'Red Wall', and calls for regional devolution.

​Meanwhile, with a General Election coming this year and Labour miles ahead in the polls, ​i​t's high time we scrutinised what a change of Government might mean for the North of England.

It's been very easy for Keir Starmer's Labour Party to slam the failings of levelling up and the promises of the Boris Johnson Government that failed to materialise, but voters up here deserve to know exactly what the Opposition would do differently if they got into power.

So how much do we know about Labour's policies which might affect the North? Someone who's been looking at just that subject is Joseph Timan, political writer for the Manchester Evening News​,​ he tells Rob what we've learned.
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This week the Northern Agenda podcast comes from the headquarters of the North East's Chronicle and Journal newspapers in the centre of Newcastle for a special mayoral hustings edition.

In a month's time one of the five people speaking to Rob Parsons over the conference room table will be the new elected mayor of the North East.

They'll have powers and funding - some £4.2bn over 30 years - to impact the lives of millions of people in a huge patch stretching from Berwick to Barnard Castle.

So the stakes will be high when voters across Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland pick their preferred candidate - meaning there is all the more reason to know who they are and what they'll do if they get into power.

Joining Rob Parsons for the hustings is Jamie Driscoll, the independent candidate who is currently mayor of the North of Tyne, university archivist Andrew Gray standing for the Green Party and Dr Aidan King, who works at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary for the Liberal Democrats.

Labour's candidate is Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Kim McGuinness and for the Conservatives we have Northumberland County Councillor Guy Renner Thompson. Sunderland councillor Paul Donaghy, who is Reform UK's candidate, couldn't make it so has sent in a recorded message.

Hear them set out how they'd approach the job and their position on the big issues that will likely matter to voters, including answers to questions sent in by Chronicle and Journal readers.
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