Graeme Whitfield
SO the North East has its first regional mayor and it is Labour’s Kim McGuinness – congratulations to her.
Congratulations too to the other candidates. It takes either bravery or a rampant ego to run for political office these days, or possibly a mixture of both. But the North East mayoral campaign was at least run politely and on the issues that matter, something that can’t be said for some other parts of the country.
There is something great about voting. I like rocking up to my local church hall to decide the fate of the people who have been shoving leaflets through my door for the last few weeks. It’s somehow symbolic that polling stations – in schools, village halls or sometimes more unusual venues – are the places where normal life takes place every other day of the year, and go back to normal the next day. These are the places and people that our new mayor (and councillors) have to reach if the political process means anything.
I especially love the stubby-pencilon-string element of voting. You could hardly get a less hi-tech method of deciding our rulers and yet it is entirely perfect for the job. The moment machines are brought in for voting, the country is lost.
And now the hard bit : Ms McGuinness inherits a region that has some of the the highest rates of people unable to work, as well as people in poorly paid and insecure jobs. In some parts of the region more than 50% of children are growing up in poverty, as damning an indictment of a society as anything I can think of.
Ms McGuinness made reducing child poverty in the North East her main campaign pledge and this is, in part, a good thing. It’s a good thing because it shows a recognition of how important this issue is. But it’s also a concern, not least because pretty much all of the main levers that could be pulled to reduce child poverty are in the hands of the Westminster Government, and not the North East mayor.
The same is true of the single project that could do the most to improve the North East economy: the restoration of the Leamside rail line. The Leamside line could extend the Metro to Washington, link key jobs sites and improve reliability and capacity on the main East Coast mainline. There is cross-party agreement within the North East that it should go ahead, but it will cost upwards of £1bn and can’t be done by the North East mayor alone.
So one of the big challenges Ms McGuinness faces isn’t just to use her powers and budget well, but to persuade Westminster that it can’t just wash its hands of the North East now that devolution has happened. As former Chamber of Commerce chief executive James Ramsbotham always used to say, the North East is not a problem to be solved, but an opportunity waiting to be realised.
And here’s the other main challenge to Ms McGuinness, her opponents and everyone else in the political system: turnout at the election was around 30%, which means that seven out of every 10 people who could have voted didn’t bother, for whatever reason.
That is hardly a ringing endorsement for the devolution process that could bring meaningful change. It could be that the big test of the next four years is getting that figure higher.
■ Graeme Whitfield is editor of The Journal.