Moving Conservative HQ to Yorkshire makes sense
WHO IMAGINED that the Conservative Party would not only make such electoral inroads north of Watford, but love it so much they want to move here? It is reported that the former party of the shires is seriously thinking about moving CCHQ (Conservative Campaign Headquarters) to the North or Midlands.
Even if the House of Lords ups sticks to York, as is now being considered, I’ll believe it when it happens. I love London – and lived there for nearly 20 years – but it’s an overcrowded, expensive and increasingly polluted place to live and work. And when long-held northern Labour seats such as Don Valley turn resoundingly blue, anything is possible.
A Conservative spokesman says that following the “strong and historic result in December” there have been a series of discussions about how “our structures better reflect the party’s new geographic make-up”.
In other words, by Boris Johnson’s own admission, thousands of Northern voters ‘lent’ their votes to him and his Conservative candidates in December. Why not capitalise on this historic support (and keep these new supporters on side) by setting up shop outside London and the South East?
I can see plenty of other positive reasons for the plan; it would make the Government look like it really does mean what it says about joining the two halves of the country together. It would bring about an up-close understanding about life outside Westminster, pacify its new intake of potentially rebellious Northern and Midlands MPs and probably scare the hell out of all those weedy advisers and researchers who have stepped straight from school to university to a cushy number without ever having to change trains in Wakefield.
All that sounds very commendable. However, personally, I think it’s worth talking up the notion just to wind up Southerners like Cambridge-born Tory campaigner, blogger and broadcaster Iain Dale who’s been lugging round a chip on his shoulder since 2005 when he failed to get the Tory party’s nomination for Beverley and Holderness.
He’s written on his blog for the Conservative Home website that “moving the entire organisation out of London is a preposterous idea. London is and will remain the centre of our politics and our government, so it makes eminent sense for the HQs of all political parties to have their central offices there”.
Do you think he has any idea how pompous he sounds? Do you think he cares? Yet, it is precisely to puncture this Southern bubble of self-importance that we should give serious air-time to the idea of all the parties – not just the Conservatives – setting up proper regional headquarters.
Wigan MP Lisa Nandy, running to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, has already insisted that her party move its own HQ from Victoria, close to Westminster, to a location in its former heartlands as part of efforts to reconnect with voters who deserted the party at the election.
Meanwhile, a senior source in Downing Street has suggested canvassing the views of activists on a potential new location for this Tory HQ. It should be “somewhere reasonably close to a university with good maths/physics departments (we should get a data team up there), good train links, well-placed in political terms”.
Obviously, Yorkshire is positively brimming with potential locations which tick all those boxes, including Leeds, Sheffield and York. But if the Tories really want to show they mean business up here, what about Barnsley, Rotherham or Redcar? All are ‘reasonably close to a university’ and although train links might not be all they could be now, you can bet that if a load of politicians and policy advisers turned up on a rickety old boneshaker, a load of money would somehow be found to improve public transport in the immediate vicinity.
What about looking for a location which would not only receive a boost from all the publicity, but also benefit from the creation of new jobs and enjoy the cultural and intellectual diversity of having a serious organisation in its orbit?
Look what’s happened across the Pennines with the BBC. However, Dale decries the establishment of a second major broadcasting base in Salford for the same reasons he’s against moving any kind of political operation out of the capital; nothing’s worth bothering with outside London.
Clearly, he’s missing the point. With the BBC, it’s not about persuading ‘guests’ and people from outside the area to come and work in the North West, it’s about creating jobs which regional employees, as highly-skilled and able as any in Broadcasting House, can do.
Critics such as Dale – and there will be others equally antagonistic – say that to locate central offices anywhere but London “would be seen as virtuesignalling and gratuitous”. I’d argue that it’s precisely this London-centric prejudice that now tips the debate firmly in favour of regional relocation.
By Johnson’s own admission, thousands of Northern voters ‘lent’ their votes to him and his Conservative candidates in December. Why not capitalise on this support by setting up shop outside London?