Archives for July 2010

As the Politics Show has wrapped up for the summer, and parliament has less than a week to sit, it seems the right time to reflect on a remarkable political year and gaze ahead.

Who'd have thought 12 months ago that Redcar would have a Liberal Democrat MP sat on the Government benches with the Conservatives (although I'm sure the local Lib Dems would tell me they were convinced even then that they'd win the seat)?

It was certainly the most surprising result of an election campaign that showed how local factors can make a difference.

Tynemouth seemed the most likely Labour seat to fall, with City of Durham a close second.

But both still have Labour MPs while the eminently holdable Carlisle and Stockton South were lost to the Conservatives.

And good candidates can also make a difference - witness the incredible double digit swing for Lib Dem Tim Farron in Westmorland and Lonsdale.

We also saw a whole host of new MPs enter Parliament too.

According to one survey, some of our new entrants might make the greatest impact.

Labour's Chi Onwurah (Newcastle Central) and Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) were listed alongside Conservative Rory Stewart (Penrith and the Border) as notable new entrants.

But all the new breed have been making their presence known, with some interesting and thoughtful maiden speeches and regular contributions to debates and Prime Minister's Questions.

And what of the result. Generally, Labour would be pleased with the number of seats they retained in the North East and Cumbria in 2010.

In terms of parliamentary representation, the North has become much more important for Labour because of the loss of so many seats in the South, and they remain the dominant force.

Yet that hides what was actually an awful result for Labour in terms of the share of the vote.

The party polled less than 50 per cent of the popular vote in the North East for the first time since the Second World War, winning a lower share of the vote than in 1983.

But who really benefited from that slide in support?

The Conservatives did to a certain extent. They reclaimed second place in the North East from the Lib Dems, with their vote up by four percentage points. But at 24%, their share was still well below the 31% they achieved in 1992.

The Liberal Democrats didn't benefit only increasing their vote by one percentage point in the North East despite the victory of Ian Swales in Redcar.

It was actually the smaller parties that benefited the most, increasing their share of the vote by 5 percentage points.

So there are challenges ahead for all the parties.

Any new Labour leader needs to be aware of just how bad the 2010 result was. They will need to be robust in opposing Coalition cuts, but also capable of carving out an alternative vision.

The Conservatives need to make good on their promises to rebalance the economy to encourage more growth in manufacturing and in the North. They have promised private sector growth to counter the impact of cuts on the region's significant public sector and need to show they can create an economy that can deliver that.

And the Liberal Democrats will need to be able to highlight how they've delivered their policies in a coalition government to satisfy their activists and voters that the deal with the Tories was worthwhile.

There's plenty of interest ahead too in the next few months.

The Labour leadership contest sprawls over the summer. David Miliband is still the favourite but brother Ed is gaining momentum.

A consultation has begun on the replacement for regional development agencies.

The Coalition appears a little confused on those replacements. They'll be local enterprise partnerships but Vince Cable has said some regional structure could survive. The Conservatives may not agree.

And indeed one Labour MP - Middlesbrough's Sir Stuart Bell - has already said he'd prefer to see one focused solely on Teesside, rather than on the North East as a whole.

Regional offices also look certain to get the chop.

Cuts of course are already biting in schools and in our police forces.

But the real detail of the impact of the cuts will only become clear in the autumn spending review.

The party conferences come before then, and will be an interesting test of the mood of members and their view of the "new politics".

Further ahead there'll also be a test of just what the region's voters make of the coalition too.

Next May's local elections will be a crucial insight into how Lib Dem voters view the performance of the party, and on how Labour's responded to defeat. The Conservatives will also hope the progress they've made isn't undone now they're in government.

And the North's voters may also be deciding on whether they want to change the electoral system and embrace the Alternative Vote, while also trimming the number of MPs in the region.

Time then to recharge the batteries. I'm away for a fortnight but will be back on the blog beat on August 9.

Until then, I hope the sun spends at least some time shining on you wherever you are.

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It's amazing what a link from the front page of the BBC website can do for you.

Usually I'm delighted to see just a couple of comment posts on a blog entry.

But after my Big Society blog made it to the BBC front page, the comment numbers went nuclear.

It was 105 at the last count.

It's turned into a fascinating and impassioned debate about the whole concept.

David Cameron put some flesh on the Big Society bones yesterday, and insisted it wasn't just about cutting services.

And he confirmed that the Eden district of Cumbria I visited last week will be one of the pilot areas for the policy.

So the buyout of Crosby Ravensworth's pub and the village's energy project may well become a test for the Big Society idea.

But what's interesting about the debate that erupted on my blog yesterday is the clear philosophical and ideological divides that are emerging.

The Big Society, like the cuts, crystallises the real schism that is developing in our politics.

There is now clear blue water between Labour and the Conservatives on the size and role of the state.

And the Coalition's decision to cut harder and faster than Labour ever planned to shows yet again that there are genuine differences between the two parties now.

It makes a change from the perception formed over the last decade that there's little to distiguish our political parties.

The question then is who will be proved right on the impact of cuts and the viability of the Big Society concept in that climate?

The result may dictate the future fortunes of the three main political parties both in the North and the rest of the country.

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He's already been picked out as one of the new intake of MPs likely to make the biggest impact.

So I approached my encounter with Penrith and the Border Conservative Rory Stewart with interest this week.

I'd spoken to him before the election, but I was interested to know how this rather unusual MP was finding life in Westminster.

As you may know if you've taken in the inches of newspaper columns that have already been dedicated to Rory Stewart's short political career, he has a fascinating and varied background.

Despite a privileged upbringing and education, some don't necessarily see him as a natural Conservative.

And I must admit I also wondered how a man who's helped govern a province in Iraq would adjust to being a backbench constituency MP.

But he has already shown that he's prepared to bypass convention.

He made his maiden speech - and a very good and thoughtful one it was - in the more intimate Westminster Hall, rather than in the glamour of the Commons chamber.

A small thing perhaps, but an indicator that he might want to do things differently.

One area where he's definitely on message is on the Conservatives' Big Society idea.

He's a Big Society Big Enthusiast. So much so, I'd watch very carefully any announcements David Cameron makes next week to see what part Rory Stewart's Cumbrian constituency may play in piloting the idea.

But I also asked him about the kind of dilemma that all new Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs must be wrestling with - how do you address cuts being made by your own government in your new constituency?

His answer is an interesting one.

He hopes to make his arguments for Penrith and the Border ahead of any individual cuts. He doesn't see a future in opposing closures or cuts one by one.

Instead he wants to make a special case of his constituency because it's the most sparsely-populated in England.

He also believes a lot of the Big Society ideas - communities taking over facilities and services - might be part of the answer.

We'll see how he gets on. But it's clear he is trying to carve a niche for himself in a couple of areas.

He's become the chair of an all-party parliamentary group on local democracy, and he's also seeking to use his expertise on Afghanistan to influence policy.

He also seems to have thrown himself into constituency work with some enthusiasm judging by the detail he gave me on everything from public toilets in Nenthead to play parks in Brough.

The jury's still out on whether Rory Stewart can make the kind of impact he made outside parliament, within the Commons.

But there's no doubt he is an interesting and intelligent addition to the House, and one I suspect who won't just toe the party line purely for the sake of it.

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We, and I include myself in this, can spend a fair bit of time moaning about what politicians do to us.

But there are a select band of people who, spend less time moaning and instead concentrate on overcoming their problems.

I've been to meet two such groups of people, in contrasting areas.

The villagers of Crosby Ravensworth in Cumbria are one group who've faced some severe challenges.

In the last few years their community has endured the closure of its village shop, post office and two pubs.

Yet rather than watch their village head into terminal decline, they've decided to take their fate into their own hands.

They've drawn up a community plan and formed a trust which will soon have charitable status.

They've managed to reopen one of the local pubs by persuading 105 villagers to pledge £1,500 each to gain a share in their local.

They're planning to build some new affordable homes for local families on a site they're buying in Crosby Ravensworth.

And even more ambitiously, they have a plan to use slurry and silage from local farms to generate electricity.

Using anaerobic digestion, the energy would help heat some local homes, with the rest being sold to the National Grid to generate income for the village.

That money could then help sustain services like local buses as well as revive others like the village shop.

They are a determined bunch of people, who've had to overcome a host of obstacles to get as far as they have.

It's no wonder then that the man credited with the Conservatives' Big Society idea is paying them a visit.

Lord Nat Wei is said to be even brainier than David Willets but he still might get a few pointers from a Cumbrian village.

He's been invited by Penrith and the Border MP Rory Stewart, who sees the industriousness of his constituents as an ideal model for ways of communities taking control of their own lives.

Rory Stewart is now the Chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Local Democracy, and is keen for the Government to see Cumbria as a model of how the Big Society might work.

And 35 miles up the A6 in Carlisle, a different Cumbrian community has also been working together to improve the lot of those who live there.

Harraby in Carlisle is much more deprived, and far more urban than Crosby Ravensworth.

But over the last few years, a project called Harraby Together We Can has helped improve the lives of people living there.

The community has seen a new play area built, a new BMX track set up for children, and there's been an improvement in the whole environment on the estate.

There is though a key difference with Crosby Ravensworth.

Although there are local people involved in the project, it was started by the local councils, and the improvements have been funded through public money.

It's a pilot project, and there was hope it could be extended to other communities.

But the local Labour councillor for Harraby, Michael Boaden, doubts that can happen in an era of severe cuts.

He believes the Government's Big Society ideas will only benefit middle class people with lots of time and money.

He fears councils won't be able to afford the support it's offered Harraby in the future, making it harder for communities to follow in their footsteps.

It's a debate we'll be exploring in the Politics Show this Sunday on BBC1 at 11.30, but let me know what you make of the Big Society idea.

Is it really people power, or just part of a cuts agenda?

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Generally, I think there are few big stories that don't have some political angle to them.

Take some of the momentous stories that have hit the region over the last few months.

The West Cumbrian floods stimulated a debate about how much investment has been put in to prepare for extreme weather.

I had to get clarification on the laws about seatbelts when the school bus crashed near Keswick.

And of course the murder of 12 people by Derrick Bird reopened the debate on gun laws.

But up to now I have struggled to think of too much that was political about the Raoul Moat case.

There are investigations into the conduct of the police which might turn into public policy issues, but the Independent Police Complaints Commission will probably need to report back before any debate begins in earnest.

You can though always depend on Prime Minister's Questions for making almost any issue political.

And indeed the Raoul Moat saga did get raised in PMQs today.

David Cameron was pressed into commenting on the case by the Conservative MP for Daventry, Chris Heaton-Harris.

His intervention follows the placing of dozens of bouquets both outside Moat's Newcastle home and at the riverside in Rothbury where he shot himself.

But Mr Heaton-Harris was most concerned with the Facebook webpage of the "RIP Raoul Moat You Legend" group.

Now, I confess I had a look at this today, and it is a rather bizarre mix of people paying tribute to Mr Moat, and even more disturbingly some who would have liked to see him kill more police (or polis as many of them spell it).

I can't quite make my mind up how many of those posting are being "ironic" and how many are actually sincere in their support for Raoul Moat's war against the police.

The page says more than 28,000 people like it, though some people seem to have joined that list to condemn some of the comments supporting Raoul Moat, and to ask for the page to be shut down.

Chris Heaton-Harris wants the PM to get Facebook to take the page down.

In reply, as you'd expect, David Cameron's made it clear his sympathies rest entirely with Raoul Moat's victims.

He said the Daventry MP had raised a "very good point", and that there should be no public sympathy for the gunman.

He said: "It is absolutely clear that Raoul Moat was a callous murderer, full stop, end of story.

"I cannot understand any wave, however small, of public sympathy for this man. There should be sympathy for his victims and the havoc he wreaked in that community. There should be no sympathy for him."

Of course, though this does show the limitation of what politicians can do in this age of the web.

Even if David Cameron does contact Facebook, he has no power to force a web provider to take a page down.

And even if Facebook does block the page, there's nothing to stop anyone setting up a replacement just as quickly.

So even if this story has taken a political turn today, there doesn't seem to be much at the moment that politicians can do about it other than join the debate with the rest of us.

----

Update at 4:30pm - The Prime Minister's official spokesman has said that the PM's condemnation of the Facebook page devoted to the gunman Raoul Moat will be expressed to the organisation at an official level.

Let's see what happens next!

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The North's mines may have gone, the numbers of miners may be dwindling, but the Durham Miners' Gala lives on.

Thousands again flocked to the city at the weekend.

Now I have heard tell a few of those visitors do see it as a reason to have a drink or six.

But many do go for the ceremony, the colour and the part it plays in the North East's heritage.

And I'm sure some will have reflected on the poignancy of an event that has outlasted the industry it celebrates.

The moment to do that might be during a performance of Gresford, or the Miner's Hymn as it's become known.

I confess I knew little about Gresford and its history until I read a book that has recently been published.

Tony Benn has described Peter Crookston's "The Pitmen's Requiem" as a very remarkable book, and I'd tend to agree.

The history of mining may be well-trodden territory, but this reflective, moving and intelligent book matches the mood of the hymn it celebrates.

At the outset Peter intended to write a biography of Robert Saint, the Durham pitman who wrote Gresford.

He met him as a child, and he came from the same North East town of Hebburn.

Saint wrote Gresford in the 1930s to commemorate a truly terrible mining massacre in Wales.

Two hundred and sixty six men lost their lives at Gresford Pit, 200 of the bodies could never be recovered.

But music that was written as a memorial to one disaster has become so much more.

It has been adopted as the "miner's hymn" and played at pit closures and pitmen's funerals throughout the region.

And a bit like Gresford, "The Pitmen's Requiem" may have started focusing on one subject but has ended up as an elegy to a whole way of life that has now disappeared.

Just as you can appreciate the emotional punch of Gresford without ever having been in a pit (Tony Benn chose it as one of his Desert Island Discs for the reasons you can see in the video below), so you can appreciate Peter Crookston's book even if you've never lived in a mining community.

It may also make more people remember Robert Saint. There are no plaques or memorials in Hebburn. The flat where he composed Gresford is sited anonymously above a chip shop.

But perhaps the greatest testament to the man lies around the corner in a development of retired miners' cottages. Saint donated the royalties from Gresford to the NUM, who then built the homes.

If you want to see more on Gresford and Peter Crookston's book, you can watch Look North on Tuesday evening at 6.30pm.

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The MPs have had their say but now local Labour parties are delivering their verdicts on who they're backing to be the next party's leader.

And so far in the North, David Miliband is leading the way.

Nine constituency parties in the North East have so far submitted their nominations.

Six - Blyth, Bishop Auckland, Gateshead, Houghton and Sunderland South, Jarrow and Sedgefield - have gone for David Miliband.

Two - Easington and Newcastle North - have plumped for brother Ed.

One - Washington and Sunderland West - has nominated Ed Balls.

It's interesting to see where local parties have backed up their own MP's choice and where they haven't.

Sharon Hodgson backed Ed Balls, which may have helped to persuade her local party in Washington and Sunderland West to support him too.

Easington, Newcastle North, Gateshead, Houghton and Sunderland South and Sedgefield have also chosen the same candidate as their MP.

In Blyth though, Ronnie Campbell nominated Diane Abbott, in Bishop Auckland, Helen Goodman had gone for Ed Miliband and Jarrow's Stephen Hepburn had nominated Ed Balls.

The nominations don't mean a great deal though as each individual Labour party member still has their own vote. We also don't know how many members bothered to take part in the process.

But they might be some indication of where the candidates stand.

If the contest was based on fundraising clout, then David Miliband would certainly be well ahead.

According to the Electoral Commission, the South Shields MP has raised £185,000 so far. Contrast that with the £28,000 accumulated by Ed Balls, and the £15,000 raised by Ed Miliband.

David Miliband's donors include Chariots of Fire producer and former Vice Chancellor of Sunderland University Lord David Puttnam, Lord David Sainsbury and former Blur drummer Dave Rowntree.

But this Sunday The Politics Show puts Mr Miliband through its own test.

We introduced him to four local Labour party members and one former member.

All were undecided, so we gave him half an hour to win them over.

You can see how well he gets on in the programme this Sunday on BBC1 at 11am.

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One of the Coalition's cuts that might be more popular than others is the slimming down of the House of Commons.

650 MPs are likely to become 600 under government plans to reduce the size of parliament and standardise the number of voters in each constituency.

We don't know exactly what's being proposed at the moment, but the Conservatives have talked about no constituency being 5% smaller or larger than the average.

That average based on the existing figures is thought to be around 77,000 electors.

If that is what happens then the vast majority of the North East and Cumbria's constituencies would be seen as undersized.

I could only find ten of our seats that actually fit that criteria.

So seats like Harrogate and Knaresborough, Middlesbrough South, Scarborough and Whitby, Stockton South, Sunderland Central, Tynemouth, North Tyneside, Thirsk and Malton, York Central and York Outer may well survive unaltered.

But many others fall well short of that 77,000 figure.

Of course Labour believes the plan is all about reducing the numbers of their seats in inner city areas.

And certainly some of their Tyneside seats fall well short of the average.

All three Newcastle seats are below average, with Newcastle Central in particular only having an electorate of 60,507.

David Miliband's South Shields seat also has only 63,294 voters.

But it's actually the large rural counties of Cumbria and Northumberland that look the most vulnerable to a cull of MPs. And that includes seats belonging to all three parties.

The smallest electorate in our region is in Sir Alan Beith's Berwick constituency. It has just 57,403 voters.

Conservative Hexham isn't much bigger either (61,375), and the Labour seats of Wansbeck (63,045) and Blyth Valley (64,263) are also well below average.

Cumbria's seats also fall short. Tim Farron's Westmorland and Lonsdale comes closest (67,881) followed by John Stevenson's Conservative Carlisle (65.263) and Rory Stewart's Tory seat of Penrith and the Border (64,548).

But it's the Labour seats in West Cumbria that look particularly small. Jamie Reed's Copeland has 63,291 voters, while Tony Cunningham in Workington relies on an electorate of just 59,607.

Presumably the Electoral Commission has allowed those seats to be lower in population because they're often huge geographically. Penrith and the Border and Berwick are two of the largest in the country.

Taking a seat out of each county might then make sense in terms of evening out the electorate in each seat, but it could well be controversial when people realise how large it might make the remaining constituencies.

Mind you the Government can point to North Yorkshire, another rural, sparsely populated county, which has some of the most populous constituencies in the region.

If MPs can manage in Richmond (79,748) Thirsk and Malton (76,231), or Scarborough and Whitby (75,443), why can't they manage bigger constituencies in Cumbria and Northumberland?

The Government is planning to look at changes in constituency boundaries and sizes between now and the proposed referendum on changing the voting system next May.

A rough calculation suggests the region could lose around four seats.

It'll be interesting to see what happens to public support for fewer MPs when people find out that their constituency will be in the firing line.

Here's the full list of electorates in the region:

Berwick 57,403
Bishop Auckland 68,370
Blaydon 67,808
Blyth Valley 64,263
Carlisle 65,263
Copeland 63,291
Darlington 69,352
Durham North 67,548
Durham North West 70,618
Easington 63,873
Gateshead 66,492
Harrogate and Knaresborough 75,269.
Hexham 61,375
Hartlepool 68,923
Houghton and Sunderland South 68,729
Jarrow 64,350
Middlesbrough 65,148
Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland 72,664
Newcastle Central 60,507
Newcastle East 64,487
Newcastle North 67,710
Penrith and the Border 64,548
Redcar 67,125
Richmond 79,478
Sedgefield 64,727
South Shields 63,294
Scarborough and Whitby 75,443
Stockton North 67,363
Stockton South 74,552
Sunderland Central 74,485
Tynemouth 75,680
Tyneside North 77,690
Thirsk and Malton 76,231
Wansbeck 63,045
Westmorland and Lonsdale 67,881
Workington 59,607
Washington and Sunderland West 68,910
York Central 74,908
York Outer 74,965

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Back after a week off and the cuts/savings (delete as appropriate) agenda is moving on apace.

Indeed as one of my colleagues in the Twittersphere put it, "it's all a bit miserable at the moment."

We've had more detail on the end of regional development agencies.

The new Regional Growth Fund appears to have eaten up the vast amount of the funding for RDAs.

That means the new local enterprise partnerships set to replace them look like they'll have to be financed from existing council budgets.

But the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles believed he had some good news to impart today.

He announced the killing of the previous government's regional planning regime.

The snappily-named Regional Spatial Strategies have been dispatched with immediate effect. They took years to draw up, but just one pronouncement from Mr Pickles has seen them off.

He's described their regional housing targets as "Soviet-style" and blamed them for a shortage of new homes.

The Government says the scrapping of regional agencies and planning, will give our councils more clout. Labour says the decisions actually move some powers back to Whitehall.

But probably the most striking development has been the scale of cuts to the Building Schools for the Future project.

I've just been through the list and have found 70 schools across the North East and Cumbria who've had their plans for refurbishment or rebuilding halted.

They include six in Cumbria, seven in Darlington, three in Durham, five in Hartlepool, nine in North Tyneside, one in Northumberland, eight in Redcar and Cleveland, four in South Tyneside and Gateshead, 13 in Stockton, and 14 in Sunderland.

All are listed as "Stopped". A further four projects are described as being "for discussion" so may well get added to the list.

The Department for Education and Skills insist though the schools shouldn't abandon all hope of investment in the future.

They say it won't now happen under the Building Schools for the Future banner, but there will inevitably need to be some way of investing in school buildings in the years to come.

But they don't yet know what that method will be.

A review panel of the great and good - headed by Tesco's Head of Property Services - has been put together to try and come up with a plan, presumably ahead of this autumn's Comprehensive Spending Review.

So the schools who've seen their plans stymied will now have to wait some months before finding out what might happen next.

I think you can be fairly certain though that any new scheme won't be as generous as Building Schools for the Future.

The news will be a body blow to schools like Hurworth, near Darlington, which the Politics Show visited a few weeks ago.

Given the state of their buildings, it was hard to argue against some sort of investment, but for now any hope of refurbishment is in limbo.

Were they given false hope by a spendthrift Labour government? Is this a price worth paying to eliminate the deficit? Or is this a cut too far which will damage the education of thousands of pupils?

You tell me...

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