The Northern Agenda Laudable

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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In the next few months as the impending General Election dominates our politics, The Northern Agenda podcast is going on the road.

Across the North of England voters will be going to the polls five years on from the dramatic 2019 election where large swathes of our region broke the habit of decades by switching their allegiance from Labour to the Tories, putting Boris Johnson into Downing Street in the process.

If the polls are anything to go by, those so-called 'red wall' seats are now set to go back to Labour - plus a few more besides.

But polling can only tell us so much about what’s happened in the North in the last 5 years.

We want to hear from these Northern communities directly so between now and the election The Northern Agenda will be going to key seats around the North, we might even venture into the Midlands, to find out what’s making them tick.

First stop for Northern Agenda Editor Rob Parsons is the seaside resort of Blackpool, where there will soon be an early electoral test for Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak.

In just a few weeks there’s going to be a by-election in the Blackpool South constituency after its MP, Conservative Scott Benton, was caught by The Times newspaper offering to lobby ministers and table parliamentary questions on behalf of gambling investors.

But there’s more reason to care about Blackpool than just political intrigue - it tells us a fascinating story about the decline of coastal towns and the challenges facing the so-called ‘levelling up’ agenda. So have a listen as The Northern Agenda takes the temperature at the country’s most popular seaside resort.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why is it that bright young people from the North are so much less likely to apply for our two most prestigious universities, Cambridge and Oxford, than their counterparts in the South East and London?
It's a question that gets right to the heart of our North-South divide and this week on the podcast Rob Parsons tries to answer it with the help of a Cambridge University academic who got a place there as a working class daughter of a cleaner from Greater Manchester.
Director of Admissions at Cambridge's Pembroke College, Dr Caroline Burt, is now trying to ensure more people like her follow the same path.
She also has a book out, calle 'Arise, England: Six Kings and the Making of the English State' - find out more about it at this link.
The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons​.​ This week's episode is produced by ​C​eleste Adams
You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices