Details please, Prime Minister

Johnson must power up the North

BORIS JOHNSON’S low key speech to the virtual Great Northern Conference should be set in the context of his ebullience to the corresponding event last year. Then the Prime Minister was bouncing and fizzing with optimism ahead of the December election. He promised a Northern Powerhouse growth body so this region can fire “on all its cylinders”.

Fast forward 12 months and Mr Johnson was subdued, and weighed down by the trauma of the Covid- 19 pandemic, as the North and ‘ blue wall’ MPs waits for him to match their words with actions. Making no reference to last year’s headline promise, his message was particularly sombre – “this winter is not going to be easy” – before an acceptance that work

“to level up and unleash the talent and potential of the North” is “now more urgent than ever”.

This is important because it appears to be totally at odds with Mr Johnson’s decision to downgrade the role of Northern

Powerhouse Minister and delays to the rewriting of the Treasury’s ‘ green book’ spending rules that have so penalised Yorkshire, and the rest of the North, when it comes to allocating funds for new infrastructure.

And while he reiterated promises to “move departments of state, Ministers, private offices and all to great Northern cities and regions that represent the future of this country”, there was little of the urgency – or detail – so many expect of him.

Yes, the Covid- 19 crisis looks destined to define the Johnson premiership and little could have prepared the PM for this year’s events. Yet the pandemic has, in fact, made the Northern Powerhouse programme – and schemes like the creation of new Opportunity Areas for schools – even more urgent. Again, this demands a fully empowered Government department in the North providing the dynamism, and taking the necessary decisions, that Mr Johnson and his Cabinet are struggling to provide.