Power up the North beyond city centres

LOTS of talk this week about what the new Conservative prime minister needs to do for the North, thanks largely to newspapers across the region demanding action (see page four).

Our own MP, Jake Berry, also the Northern Powerhouse minister, is backing the Power Up The North campaign.

He said: “As Northern Powerhouse Minister, I fully back this campaign. What is being called for reflects what I have been working so hard to achieve, and what our new Prime Minister needs to prioritise. That’s why I’m backing Boris Johnson to be our next Prime Minister.

“Boris recognises the power of regional economies and is passionate about backing the Northern Powerhouse. I know he will deliver for the whole country.”

That’s a relief I guess – it would have been a tad awkward if Boris wasn’t the man to sort out the North, what with Mr Berry being a long-term supporter of the former London Mayor. Although you’d hope all the candidates would be interested in helping the North.

But it does rather beg the question why, almost a decade into the Conservatives being in power one way or another, the North still feels like the poor relation.

Maybe the new prime minister will make the North a priority. Maybe.

One of the problems with the Northern Powerhouse, whatever it really is, is that whatever it really is only seems to involve talking up cities, and not areas like ours.

To be fair to Mr Berry, he has said in interviews that work to date has been too Manchestercentric and that needs to change.

But a more damning assessment comes from the East Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, on Lancashire County Council’s inability to speak up for the county.

Miranda Barker called for the county to set out its ambitions, such as becoming a “driving force” in advanced manufacturing – and then ensure the message is heard beyond Lancashire’s borders.

“We are always left out of the narrative in the Northern Powerhouse and are never seen to be at the forefront of it – yet, to be honest, it can’t be delivered without us,” Ms. Barker told a meeting of the Lancashire Enterprise Partnership.

“But we need to have a demonstrable aim to be reasonably engaged [in the process] and I think we need to be much more ambitious in terms of our goals.” Interim LEP chair, David Taylor, told the meeting: “At a recent gathering for enterprise partnerships from across the country [some were wondering] why they are not better recognised, appreciated and respected on a national level.

“And it struck me that one of the main reasons was because we don’t tell anybody what we’re doing,”

And we wonder why Lancashire sometimes feels as though it’s being left behind!