Urban Radar
Urban Radar is a podcast series brought to you by Professors Tom Goodfellow and Beth Perry, which reflects on current events and emerging trends through the lens of cities and urban life. Drawing on the unique range of urban expertise in the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester, we place urban dynamics at the centre of contemporary global affairs.
Feedback:
Email: urbanradarpod@gmail.com
Instagram: @urbanradarpodcast
Credits:
Podcast production, hosting, editing & promotion: Tom Goodfellow & Beth Perry
Post-production editing & promotion: Sam Burgum
Production support: Jack Clayton
Distribution, promotion & marketing: Vicky Simpson
Music: Horizon (music by Tom Goodfellow, produced by Alan Thomson); Falling Down (music by Tom Goodfellow, performed by the Dice, produced by Alan Thomson); Ghosts (music by the Dice; produced by Alan Thompson); Kilimanjaro (music by Tom Goodfellow, produced by Alan Thompson).
Supported by the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester.
Urban Radar
6: POWERING THE NORTH - A conversation with Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this first stand-alone feature, Tom and Beth introduce an uncut conversation with Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram - the Mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region in the North of England, recorded at Sheffield's Festival of Debate.
The conversation was chaired by Beth at the Octagon Theatre, and focussed on Andy and Steve's 10-point plan for a fairer, more equal Britain, set out in their book Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain (2024). In the discussion, they reveal how their time spent as MPs in Westminster convinced them that devolution is the answer to a fairer future and a balancing of power and resources.
The feature starts at 5:22 and is followed by a short analysis from Tom and Beth reflecting on whether the German model of federalism does hold the answers to addressing regional inequalities in England, the differences between de-concentration, decentralisation and devolution, and the wider role of the 'Global North' in addressing world-wide inequalities.
Speakers:
Andy Burnham was elected Mayor of Greater Manchester in May 2017, and was re-elected for a second term in May 2021 to chair the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. Prior to this, Andy was MP for Leigh from 2001. In Government, Andy has held Ministerial positions at the Home Office, Department of Health and the Treasury. In 2008 he became Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, where he met Steve.
Steve Rotheram was elected metro-mayor of the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority in May 2017 and was re-elected in May 2024. Steve held the ceremonial title of Lord Mayor of Liverpool during the city’s European Capital of Culture year. He then served as Labour MP for Liverpool Walton from 2010 to 2017, where he led campaigns for justice for the Hillsborough families.
Credits:
Thanks to Festival of Debate for hosting the conversation and to festival organisers, Opus Independents, for the opportunity.
Hosts:
Tom Goodfellow is Professor of Urban Development in the Global Development Institute, and CEO of the African Cities Research Consortium, University of Manchester. His research focuses on the political economy of urban development and change in Africa, particularly the politics of urban land and transportation, conflicts around infrastructure and housing, and urban institutional change. (linkedin.com/in/tom-goodfellow-0b418441)
Beth Perry is Professor of Urban Epistemics and Director of the Urban Institute at the University of Sheffield. Her research focuses on the relationships between urban expertise, governance and justice, underpinned by a commitment to co-producing collective intelligence across multiple scales to address complex urban challenges. She has worked in cities in Africa, Europe and the UK. (linkedin.com/in/itsbethperry)
Email feedback to: urbanradarpod@gmail.com
You can also follow us on instagram: @urbanradarpodcast
Thanks to the Universities of Sheffield and Manchester for providing time, resources and equipment to support this podcast. And to Sam Burgum, for post-production editing and promotion.
Hello, and this month in our special feature we focus on place-based inequalities in the UK and specifically the question of how to balance power and resources between regions in England more fairly.
SPEAKER_03Devolution to city regions outside London is seen as one key step with the direct election of city regional mayors in England since the mid-2000s. But what do those mayors think is needed to ensure a fairer and more equal country?
SPEAKER_02So, welcome to Urban Radar, where for the first time we're having a special feature that is separate from the rest of our monthly discussion. And this is based on a recent public event chaired by Beth Perry, in which she was interviewing Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham, the mayors of Greater Manchester and Greater Liverpool, respectively, who are up here in Sheffield at the Festival of Debate to talk about their book, Head North: A Rally and Cry for a More Equal Britain. And we will be bringing you that discussion in just a moment.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. That was quite an exciting, vibrant event, wasn't it, at the Octagon in Sheffield?
SPEAKER_02It was, I believe. Pretty jam-packed. Something like 650 people or more there.
SPEAKER_03The journey that Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham have gone through to write this book as city regional mayors kind of mirrors my own research journey. Because the first research project I ever worked on in 2001 was the Liverpool-Manchester Vision Study. And at the time, that was trying to look at how these big city regions in the north of England could work together so that they were jointly pulling in the same direction to address regional disparities in the north. And actually, in the research centre I was in then, we went on to do a whole range of projects that was looking at the idea of city regions and actually putting devolution on the agenda. I think that's why I was asked to chair this debate.
SPEAKER_02Yes, and we know that there will be people listening to this all over the world. 53 countries we have listening so far, 279 cities.
SPEAKER_03That's quite a lot, isn't it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, so all this talk about that we're going to have about Liverpool and Manchester may not immediately make sense to people in, say, Yogyokarta or even Corsum in Wiltshire.
SPEAKER_03You're reading from the list now, aren't you? Which we check regularly to see where you're listening from.
SPEAKER_02So uh But um let's just say a little bit about devolution, because a lot of this is, as you said, about devolution within the UK, an area in which you are much more expert than I am. So can you tell us a little bit?
SPEAKER_03We had a referendum in 1997, uh, both in Wales and in Scotland, which increased powers and responsibilities to uh authorities in Scotland and Wales and was enshrined in law, and that was kind of followed by increased powers in Northern Ireland in 1999. Successive governments have kind of gone on to uh increase powers and responsibilities in different ways, different policy areas for city regions outside of London. Um, and most recently we've had this new white paper in 2025 that in fact Madeline Pill was talking a bit about um back in episode two. Um, and so Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham were two of the first city regional mayors who were elected in 2017. So that kind of brings us a bit up to where we are now. And I think the reason why the book is called Head North is because they were both uh central government, um, and their experiences there led them to believe that they really needed to address the inequalities in the country by going back to the Liverpool City region and Greater Manchester. Um, and that's because of this term they use quite often, the London-centric Westminster bubble. And what they mean by the Westminster bubble is that uh lots of decisions are being taken by parliamentarians, that's Westminster, but equally by civil servants, that's Whitehall.
SPEAKER_02There's also a mention in there of the M25. So when people talk about within the, I mean, I realise that people, you know, tuning in from Spillumberto in Italy or Lubbock, Texas, may not get some of these references. Um but the M25 is the motorway that kind of surrounds London. So that within the M25 often is another shorthand for that kind of very London-centric.
SPEAKER_03But it's quite unusual that they come out with this 10-point plan that two city regional mayors would publish a book, that they do so collaboratively, because Liverpool and Manchester have often been in competition with each other, or at least historically, whether that's around football or music or whatever it might be. So that's why it's kind of significant that they've come up with what's potentially quite a radical plan. There's maybe just one other quick thing we should mention for international understanding, and that's about uh one of the events that catalysed the writing of the book for both Steve and Andy, which is Hillsborough. Hillsborough is an area of Sheffield and the location of Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. Uh and back in 1989, there was a fatal crowd crush at a football match between two teams, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest, at which 97 fans died. Um, and Andy Burnaman, Steve Rotherham's analysis is that that was effectively a state-sponsored cover-up in which the voices of victims weren't heard because of where they were from. And that set them on a journey to think about the North and to think about what it needed, what it meant to be from there, and the extent to which they felt invisible by those in that Westminster bubble that we were talking about earlier.
SPEAKER_02Right, I think we've probably done enough by way of a pre-explainer. So let's go into the feature. It will sound different. Obviously, we're in a massive room. I was in the audience watching, uh giggling occasionally. But um, yeah, enjoy, and we will come back with some reflections at the end.
SPEAKER_03Thank you very much for that lovely welcome. It's wonderful to be here, and on behalf of the University of Sheffield and the Urban Institute, um, welcome to the university as well. Um, I want to waste no time really in introducing our two guests for the evening. First, we have Andy Burnham. They don't really need much introduction, let's be clear, because that's why you're here. Um, but Andy Burnham is the mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. He was Labour Member of Parliament for Lee from 2001 to 2017, um, and was culture secretary and health secretary in Gordon Brown's cabinet. He's also joined by his co-author, Steve Rotherham, who's the mayor of Liverpool City Region. Uh, Steve was Labour Member of Parliament for Liverpool Walton from 2010 to 2017, and also served as the parliamentary private secretary to Jeremy Corbyn from 2015 to 2017. That's the official blurb. For those of you that have read the book, you'll know that there are many more interesting things about these men. And if you do read the book, you can find out much more about their upbringing, their favourite musicians, and also their very dapper outfits, which they are wearing tonight. So without any further ado, let's welcome to the stage Andy and Steve.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for coming, everyone.
SPEAKER_03So it's wonderful to have you here. I know you've um hot legged it across from Leeds where you've been launching a new great North initiative, which no doubt we'll hear a bit about later. Um, I want to start by welcoming you to the real North. I'm glad you finally made it to Yorkshire. We have rolled out the white carpet for you. Um, I really enjoyed your book. I was struck by your passion, your honesty, your humility. Um, and actually, for me, I found it quite surprisingly radical as well as being pragmatic. So, as we heard, this is a festival of debate, it's a festival of democracy, and I really think we need to get into the propositions at the heart of your book. Um, you have put forward a 10-point plan for a fairer Britain. It's a rallying cry, you say, so that it doesn't matter where people are born, across the UK, they can have a good life no matter what. And as you say in the book, each of your 10 points involves a transfer of power to people and places, and taken together are intended to create the conditions for a more functional, fairer country. Um, and I'm sure that's something that many people would want to see. So I'm gonna give you the chance to tell us how we're gonna get there. Um it's obviously your experiences in Westminster as members of parliament that have really shaped this 10-point plan that you've given us and convinced you to head north, to leave it all behind you and become the inaugural mayors of Liverpool and Manchester. And um, Andy, you introduce in the book this analogy of the stately home that needs rewiring, this rickety old, broken down building that is Britain, this anti-democratic elitist system, and we need to rewire it for a better, fairer Britain. Can you tell us a bit more about this analogy and how it underpins your 10-point plan?
SPEAKER_00Thanks, uh Beth. Evening, everyone. Isn't it amazing for us to see this turnout? Uh thanks, uh, thanks so much. We we like coming over, we do like coming over this part of the country.
SPEAKER_03That's because it's great. And we do have better news.
SPEAKER_00When we fancy a little break from laughing and having a good time, we kind of uh oh that's how to alienate your audience.
SPEAKER_03Right, that's it, we're off.
SPEAKER_00Um so, yes, I mean, I put forward this kind of uh image of a creaking, uh crumbling stately home uh with the the lights are on in a couple of rooms, but not not all of them. And that's what I uh would call Britain, Britain today. Um, you know, power is not evenly distributed throughout the place. Um and this is what we're about changing, and that's why we shook hands in 2016 after a late vote over a pint in Westminster and decided basically to we we just through our experience with Hillsborough, and we can maybe come on to that later, we concluded that we couldn't change the Westminster system inside the Westminster system. The parliamentary whip prevents that. You know, you've got to toe the line, haven't you? It's very hard. We stepped outside the sort of the norm by doing what we did uh over Hillsborough. Um, but you know, we we just realized there's only so far you can go with that in Westminster without, you know, basically being sort of completely ostracised. So we decided to to leave. And you know, we're on with changing this stately home. And to get to the 10-point plan, the first the first uh proposal is a written constitution. If there's not clarity about the rules about how the country should be run, that's an opportunity for those who want to abuse power to do so, isn't it? And we're one of five countries in the world, uh, not great company if you read the names, you know, where you know there's no written constitution. So we say a written constitution for Britain that uh is all about uh rewiring it properly so everywhere is uh is is included and is has power, if you like, to in terms of its right the rights of people in all places. But at the heart of it, we call for a British basic law and it's based on the German basic law. So I don't know if people are familiar with that, but the German basic law uh stipulates that there must be equivalent living standards across the 16 lender of Germany. And if you visit, you can feel it, can't you? You can feel that equivalence in the public infrastructure. Obviously, we don't have that. And what you have is huge disparities in living standards, huge disparities in infrastructure, such that all of us here will feel, well, we're living in a different country, it's felt like sometimes, isn't it, to London and the south east, and particularly your city. The connectivity, frankly, is it's shocking, isn't it?
SPEAKER_03You know, getting from Sheffield to Manchester, it's well you'd be faster to walk across the Pennines, really, wouldn't you?
SPEAKER_00We could make this whole thing about Snake Pass and Woodhead Past tonight, couldn't we? And that would keep us going all night, I think. But that makes the point though, doesn't it? You know, Steve and I argue if there was such a thing as a British basic law in a written constitution, Manchester would have an underground system, I think. Liverpool would have uh a tram system, you certainly would have a motorway uh to Manchester, um, and the country would feel feel very, very different. And this is what we're all about now, this launch of the Great North today. Let's remember 200 years ago, the North of England built itself from the bottom up. It built the industry that led the world, it then built infrastructure that led the world. We gave railways to the world. First intercity line was between Liverpool and Manchester, opened in 1829. You know, we did it before. But I think what happened was in the 20th century, the country nationally decided, as the industry went into decline, that the north couldn't be much anymore. And they almost put us in a, well, they used, you could pick it up from here, Steve, couldn't you? They they almost put us into managed decline. And in fact, there was a cabinet minute about the city of Liverpool that that very much said that uh that the parts of the north should be put into managed decline. What's happening now in the 21st century, history is coming full circle. And through devolution, we're beginning to say we're just not having it like that. We're not having that for our kids that we grew up with, second-class citizens in our own country. And that's what this is all about. And actually, devolution is beginning to change it. I'll finish on this point. Greater Manchester has been growing faster than the UK economy for 10 years now, average growth 3.1%. We are the UK's fastest growing city region. What's done that? Devolution. Westminster didn't fix anything for us. We demanded the right to do more for ourselves. Westminster gave us a housing crisis. Westminster fragmented our public transport to the point where it's almost unusable and way too expensive. Westminster broke the education system by only focusing on the university route and neglecting technical education. Devolution across the north of England now is beginning to fix those things. I'm the first mayor to put buses back under public control. Steve's going to be the next. You know, it's interesting now how we're beginning to get hold of our own affairs and our own destiny again. And obviously that's what the book is all about.
SPEAKER_03And Steve, those two starting points, the written constitution and the basic law, which guarantees equal living standards for people across the UK, they're very much born from your experiences. Well, firstly, you in the 1980s, 1990s, the loss of EU structural funds in Liverpool as well had a massive effect, didn't it? So you need those things, but then you also need to reform the way that funding gets allocated. And you talk quite a lot about that in the book as well, don't you?
SPEAKER_01We do. And um I literally I've just been um texting Rachel Reeves showing them.
SPEAKER_00All work all work related related.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah. Although there was a bit of music and it but no Was it the jam? Yeah, it was. But of course, there's there's there's a real opportunity for us now because those people who are now secretaries of state were the same people that I walked into Westminster on on day one. Um, you know, it's like going to big school and everybody's meeting themselves for the first time, and then some of them go and do really well for themselves. You always have that affinity because these people um were there when we were walking around without officers and didn't know where to stay in in London and didn't know what this thing um was all about, which is the Westminster bubble. And and people don't talk about the Westminster bubble anymore, but believe me, it really does exist. And the very fact that everything is seen in there through the prism of what's in the interest of London and the South East, I think that skews some of the problems that we obviously witnessed whilst we were down there. So um I I I I think there's a a massive opportunity now for Rachel and the government to do something for us, and that is uh along those lines of the Green Booth needs uh overhauling it. So the Green Book is the Treasury orthodoxy by which they assess uh projects and it's always uh being loaded in favour of London over than anywhere in the north, because it'll be on um average house prices or or wages or whatever it might be, land value. And of course it's it's considerably more down there than it is here. So Green Booch needs uh to change, and Rachel made uh the statement, didn't she, uh saying you know we're gonna have a review and we're very much um uh included in that review.
SPEAKER_00And it's kind of interesting, isn't it? Because we are beginning to get movement towards our our ten-point plan. But one of the things we wanted to really firmly establish in the minds of everybody with the book is the north-south divide is no accident. The north-south divide is national policy and people need to see it in that way. When the North went into managed decline in the uh second half of the 20th century, I think there was a sense, wasn't there, that it couldn't be much anymore, and that the city of London and the South East would pay for some sort of public service provision everywhere, but that's where the the kind of beating heart of the economy uh would would be. And as Steve's describing, the Green Book codified that, and the way it worked was it it put a kind of window on when public investment was meant to repay back 25 years, so always northern projects would struggle, yeah, and we couldn't break the cycle. Europe funded on the social case for investment, yeah, and our own UK government only did uh an economic case, and you've got fantastic people like Dick Cabourne who's out there somewhere today. Yeah, he's in the bar.
SPEAKER_03And our friend the l uh the late great John Prescott, you know, they they tried, if you like, and and we learned and saw saw all of that, but you know, we are absolutely clear the the country is wired for inequality, hence the need to rewire it in the interests of all the heads around um HS2 and that decision, which you talk about very powerfully in the book.
SPEAKER_00Well, it was outrageous, but they did it to you as well, didn't they? They pulled HS2 here, you know, having promised it. And the damage this does to trust in politics. But then, worse, they were in our city for their conference. I mean, it was unbelievable.
SPEAKER_03They didn't come and tell you, you just got a text message.
SPEAKER_00They were all sitting in the Midland Hotel having pizzas and waiting, you know, and we kept saying, can we just come over and talk about what you're about to not once, you know. That but that says something about this country, doesn't it? That the government of the day felt it was okay to be in a major city, we would say the second city of the country, and cancel a project that is was just critical to its economic future without even talking to the mayor and the leader of the council. I mean, that tells you something about the arrogance that's kind of baked into the British political uh culture.
SPEAKER_03And you can see why, in some ways, it's ironic that in order to head north, the first few points of your ten-point plan take us back to Whitehall, the constitution, the basic law, but also removal of the whip, which I know is quite a controversial plan, uh, and also uh reform of the voting system with proportional representation. Because you see that you actually have to get those things right in your stately home before you have the tools and levers to make decisions yourselves. And that was very much because you had this tension, didn't you, in the book between being a loyalist, being a maverick, and not wanting to have to make that choice.
SPEAKER_01Yep. And and just on the tensions, the there's so we agree on an awful lot except for football allegiances.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And which is the best musical heart of the north?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03And you are both wrong, it's Sheffield.
SPEAKER_00I mean I was I was fine when Steve uh got Eurovision, and I supported that because obviously we're gonna get a lot of visitors from Manchester Airport, but we we preserved our reputation as the uh city of cool music. So uh it was it was absolutely fine by me, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_03So, right, you're talking about devolution as the answer here. Um, it's got two elements to it. One is also reform of the House of Lords, uh a new Senate of nations and regions.
SPEAKER_00When are we gonna get more angry about the House of Lords?
SPEAKER_03I know.
SPEAKER_002025.
SPEAKER_03But you've got several ways of reforming it, haven't you, in the book? Tell us about them.
SPEAKER_00Well, this is where we do violently agree on something, isn't it? 2025, the vast majority of uh members of the laws aren't just unelected, they live within the M25. And they're making your laws. And actually, they're making more of your laws than the House of Commons because the Commons under that three-line whip is basically rubber stamping government bills without amendment, and it's the Lords that makes the amendments if you you know look at how government bills are amended. Why aren't we kind of out in the streets about that? And all of my time in Westminster, have you probably the same, Steve? Whenever you raise these things, you get this thing from the sort of Westminster advisors, the clever clerks people. Oh, no one in Sheffield's interested in constitutional issues, you know no, it's all the bread and butter issues. But actually, the bread and butter issues like functional railways. People in work not having to use food banks, that those issues can't and won't be fixed until you rewire the place so that it it's run equally for a start-off and that all nature relations are equal.
SPEAKER_01You believe that we can achieve that through proportional representation, don't you? And we the this well, not one of the things. Yeah, but we slightly uh disagree with the way in which you could achieve that better balance. And and I I want to do away with the Lords, but I want to do away with the Lords through the system that we've got by ensuring that every vote counts, but in a slightly different way than you believe in the traditional PR. And so we met um Billy Bragg, didn't we, when we were in Glastonbury and Andy was speaking in Glastonbury. And Billy Bragg has come up with a way where we do do some real work. You keep yeah you keep the constitutional uh engagement. So when I when I was standing as an MP, I only wanted to stand in the area that I was from, which was Liverpool Walton. So you keep that attachment with the constituency, but then all of the votes then are assessed on on a proportional uh basis for the second chamber, and so you you're only voting once, you're not voting twice for different parties. And as you know, some people sometimes go into a polling booth and they're faced with this array of different people, and sometimes they go, I'll get I'll give a vote there and a vote there and a vote there. At least this one means that every vote cast uh is for a constituency MP and also for what what would be a reformed second chamber. But Andy's more in just straight PR.
SPEAKER_00I don't think every person in this country will be equal and every place will be equal until every vote is fully equal, and they're not at the moment in a first past the post system. But we definitely agree, don't we, as a first step to a reformed parliament. It could be done at the next general election, what Steve is describing. From votes cast under First Past the Post for the Commons, you could create a Senate of the nations and regions, uh, you know, 30% for Labour in uh uh South Yorkshire or you know Yorkshire as a whole, three members of the um three places um for the you know the allocation for um for this part of the world, you know. And actually you could really move move out the kind of the elite, if you like, who are there in the House of Lords at the moment, and you could use it as a massive thing of reconnecting people to to politics, and you could do it now at this this next uh general election. But I do go a little further, particularly on on the whip system. My experience 16 years in parliament, and I struggled more and more with it the longer I was there, is that Westminster makes a fraud out of good people because it gives you a line to take, and it gives you a three-line whip telling you how to vote. And believe me, you don't always believe that line to take when you go into an interview, and you don't always support the vote you're being asked to vote under a three-line whip, and that becomes, I found anyway, quite corrosive at times. I I kind of felt by the end of my or the second half of my time in Westminster, I got the feeling that people didn't know who I was and what I was about. And I just think I personally think if there was no whip, you would vote with your party nine times out of ten or even nineteen times out of twenty. But that one time when you say, No, you know what, think again. Right right now, disability benefits, think again. And the PLP should be free to say, think again. And I really have come to believe that very profoundly, because it would actually raise the esteem of politics in the public mind because people would think they're doing it out of conviction. What they're doing is authentic, they feel it, they believe it, and I think it would raise the status of MPs. But it's interesting how when you mention that idea of removal of the whip system, Westminster goes in, oh my god, you can't do that. It would all be chaos. Well, it wouldn't actually. I think the government I was in, and you know, Dick was in, should have listened to the PLP on some of those crucial votes that we went through through the 2000s. We were a good government, we've got a vast majority of things right, in my view, if you look at the governments that have come since. But there were big moments, the obvious ones we think about Iraq, um, foundation trusts, tuition fee. There's a number of votes where you could say, actually, if that system had been in place, different decisions would have been made, and they would have been the right decisions.
SPEAKER_01But we had a similar sort of sort of Damocles decision during our time in parliament, which was the welfare reform bill. And um we it wasn't just the whip, it was the very fact that the party wasn't in the right space, and we genuinely believed that at that time, if we had have gone against the party, then it was likely that that would have caused a permanent split in the Labour Party. So there are things sometimes that you have to do that are unpalatable and almost inexcusable in all honesty, but at the time you're doing it for the right reasons, and it's the only thing that I regret in my political life, it's the only thing that I've ever done, or and you've ever done, that is against what we stand for, but we did it for the right reasons. Not that that's an excuse because we didn't.
SPEAKER_00What you're not saying is it came slap bang in the middle of the Labour leadership election. We really did, and that's why, you know. And bear in mind, so you know, I was the candidate, he was my campaign manager.
SPEAKER_03I think the the raw materials were fine, it was the organization that was uh is that this whole like you're the brains and you're the guts, the instinct that comes through the book a bit, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00There's a there's a thing though, I mean it's an anecdote we both like to tell, isn't it, about that uh campaign. Yeah. Because in the end we had to laugh at it. We had to, you know, it was got got so grim at times that we had to there's a few anecdotes in the book, but it actually took place here in Sheffield, and it was about two weeks to go before the end of the 2015 Labour leadership election. Somebody in the audience might have been there, so you might remember this. It was in a church, it was one of my last rallies uh in a church somewhere in Sheffield, I can't remember exactly where it was, and I knew I was like way behind, and he was telling me you're just gonna have to have to try and break out of the straitjacket because I've been a bit like uh too careful, and the advisors were saying this and that. Well putting it.
SPEAKER_01And if you see that, you can just let that groove and it was a nightmare, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_00And I just needed, and so I started to sort of break free a bit, and I was on this in this church in Sheffield, packed out, on the kind of the the altar bit, and I just went for it. I kind of spoke in the uh someone's nodded, I don't know where you were there. I just kind of spoke a bit more freely and about my big theme, which has always been the north, and you know, kind of standing up for it, and you know, saying I'd be the a northern leader for the party, and we'd really get after this sort of London-centric thing. And I really went for it, and I was really proud of it. I've finished and sat down, quite good applause. And the chair said, Okay, questions now. Joe at the back. This fella stands up, he goes, Uh, Andy, I've been listening to you very carefully there for the last uh 20 minutes or so, and you gave a pretty good account of yourself. But do you realize you've been speaking all of that time underneath a sign that says, Repent, JC is coming. And I I stood there on the stage, and I was like this, wasn't I? And I looked up and then and I was like, oh my god. If it's divine. If the victory is on Jeremy's side, that's it now. Nothing you do about that.
SPEAKER_03But it was all of these experiences that made you head north then. And you talk in the book about how you've made a lot of progress with devolution, and maybe you want to tell people a bit about what you're most proud of, but also that we're not there yet, that we need full devolution by, and I don't know why you've said 2034, but 2034, we need full devolution. So, I mean, what are you most proud of? And but what else could you do if you had more powers?
SPEAKER_01Well, at least we are starting to get devolution because when we first went into it, it was just decentralisation. So they were delegating some responsibilities to us and some funding, but it was hypothecated, so that's a there's some transport funding, so it's transport, so you could only spend it on transport, even if that meant that that transport infrastructure bled over into other things, it was only for transport. Uh, and the way in which we said that you need to um approach devolution is we stand on a manifesto and say we will deliver that. You give us the pot of money, if we fail, then we're kicked out, and that that's I think a better way to approach things. So in last month, um, Andy got the integrated settlement, so the single pot, and next year um, I think Tracy, myself, and Oliver get it. So Sheffield will get involved.
SPEAKER_03Liverpool Sheffield, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh, and so that means that we'll have the same thing that um Greater Manchester and West Midlands have already got.
SPEAKER_00Shout out for Oliver as well. We he's doing great, isn't he? We think he is. He's got a real great mare here. That's our view anyway. We're uh we're big supporters of his, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And he was there, of course, at your big meeting today where you were bringing all of the northern leaders together to talk about the Great North plan.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he was there, he's got a haircut, and uh he was telling me that. Are you gonna be as the Beatles said? I had one yesterday, but I I um yeah, he's um Oliver's um been a really good addition to the group. So there's a thing called UK Mayors, and so myself, Andy, and Ben Houch and uh the three from the original group, and Sadiq, obviously, he was already there, and then there's been a there have been additions over the um the weeks and months and years, uh including some interesting characters who've recently joined the fold.
SPEAKER_03I was wondering whether you were gonna collaborate with any of the new city regional mayors. You know, it's easy to collaborate with your mates, isn't it, who might be sitting on the same side as you.
SPEAKER_00About what we do, and Steve and I stick really rigidly to this. It's gotta be place first as a mayor, not party first. Because at the end of the day, however people vote, they share a passion for the place, don't they? And for us, you know, this is partly about, you know, what we're trying to do is rebuild British politics in a better way. And it's a better starting point to start with place, isn't it? You know, place is a unifying force, and in these divided times, you've got to kind of really go to the things that unify, don't you, rather than constantly starting with things that divide people. So we do stick place first. And actually, we I work closely with Andy Street, Steve just mentioned working with Ben Houchen. You know, we will just carry on doing that. You know, we'll we'll take people as we find them. We won't, just because they're a different, yeah, we won't we won't work with them. And actually, it's when the north of England, across now, what was it, seven or eight mayors, lines up together, faces in the same direction, pulls in the same direction. That what make that's what actually makes sense.
SPEAKER_01But but that's been to date, in all honesty. We didn't have Andrea Jenkins in the last seven years to do my heading.
SPEAKER_03No, that is true, because that's a really different proposition, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Really, is she a first meeting? Yeah, first meeting. Someone just said to me, Don't ever play poker because I could see your face on the screen.
SPEAKER_00But we we we've got to we've got to try. Although we, I mean, we actually it's interesting because you know we're all from different parts of north, and and actually, to be honest, we've got more in common than you know what I mean, and even Liverpool and Manchester. I think we we kind of thought, are we taking a risk by standing together and appearing on Granada reports together? And and actually people have liked it, haven't they? And I've got a foot in both cities, and you've got a foot.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say, you're only saying that because you're half scouse, half mank. So half of you want to get drunk, but the other half won't pay. Andy in a nutshell.
SPEAKER_03Did you learn that at Cambridge, Andy, when you went there? Oh god. Well, I'm asking, because actually, you know, we've talked a bit about the big level system stuff that needs to change. Um, but in the meantime, you're both cracking on, doing what you can with the powers that you've got. You're proud, I think, in the book of transport, some of the work you've been doing around housing with housing firms. It's a massive thing, yeah. Way to Manchester Health and Social Care, but then education's the one you're really focusing on, and you've had these two very different tracks, haven't you? You went to Cambridge and got street cred for the city. No, and it doesn't mention the Smiths either. And you don't mention the cavern. What's going on? But you've had a very different trajectory, and you've both landed saying education's the most important thing, or at least one of them.
SPEAKER_00It was, I mean, it it was a massive thing in my life, but you know, I just had, you know, I describe on the first page of the book being at home in my first year, it was the Easter term, the Easter break, and I was described being back in my local pub um where I used to go before going to Cambridge. And um, I remember I describe it as having a you know a brief respite from the imposter syndrome that was uh absolutely suffocating me at Cambridge. And I don't know if that resonates with anyone else in the in the room. You know, I think it's kind of in, I always feel it's something in our DNA, isn't it? That you kind of go to other parts of the country, you see how people are, and it gets it's quite hard, isn't it, to sort of deal with it at first. None of it was in any, I had no sphere of reference for any of it. And I was immediately confronted with these sort of uh public school types who just would walk in and confidently speak about any topic under the sun. Took me a year to work out they were talking complete rubbish, but I might my god it looked good for a year. But it's kind of the northern experience to a degree, isn't it? And you have to take a bit more time, don't you, to have that confidence saying, No, I can actually uh stay here. But the the experience of it was it just taught me straight away that Britain was two countries. Because what happened was uh Hillsborough happened when I was in my first year at university, so I was at home and I went to the other semi-final that day as an Everton supporter, knowing um lots of people who were going to the other semi-final, and then was there in that same pub and they came back the next day, literally sort of dead behind the eyes and traumatized, etc. And then got to Cambridge and no one was talking about it. It was I left the Northwest in absolute, as I say, complete trauma, and I got to Cambridge and it was like, and to the extent that they did, they would just throw, oh, it was those drunk fans, or you know, and it was that was kind of my that was my formative uh years really. Um, and it kind of that's why the book starts there, because I could that's what I was not from a political family. My my mum and dad always Labour voters, but just sort of solid Liverpool people, Labour voters, um, didn't go to university, but they and they weren't activists or councillors or anything like that. Um, but it was that experience that politicized me. And um, yeah, and it it kind of is you know, I still maintain this country is two countries still, and we're on a bit of a mission to to change that.
SPEAKER_03And Steve, you were there, weren't you?
SPEAKER_00I was.
SPEAKER_03Did you want to I think you read from the book or something?
SPEAKER_01Well, it's only because um and and this obviously um I didn't know I was gonna come to Sheffield for the staff to um to read this, but there was so many untruths spoken about what happened, and of course, people will remember the famous um Sun headline, and I think that set the agenda, didn't it? And Winston Churchill's credit with credit with saying that a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on. Um that's what happens, and and people from outside um believed some of those things. But I I just wanted to uh explain from uh my perspective about not Hillsbreath, I get about that bit, but how ordinary people in Sheffield uh reacted. So in the book, I say as we exited the Hillsborough Stadium, there was a road full of terrace houses, and already they had queuing outside them. The people of Sheffield had thrown open their doors and were allowing the Liverpool fans to call loved ones back home to let them know that they were safe. The fans were leaving a bit of money in the homes to say thank you. But the woman whose phone I used wouldn't take it from me. She just wanted the help. I phoned my mum. Mum, I'm fine, but something terrible has happened at the footy. Uh, I also told her that I'd just bumped into two brothers, um, Daryl and Scott, who lived near us. Can you tell Doreen, their mum, that I've seen them and that they're safe? And to the day she died, Doreen thanked me every time we saw her for passing on the message that her kids were alive. And she said it was the greatest news that she'd ever received in her life. And it was just I wanted to include that because the people here are just working class people. And I know from my own mum, um, if somebody used the phone, she'd be hanging over you and she'd be going, Do you know how much that's costing me? And and yet it's it's like a northern parents, isn't it? Who put who let this immersion heater on? Yeah, and and and so these people who didn't know who we were opened their homes to us and allows us to phone home with that news. Uh, and and that just shows, I think, the solidarity and and the um the way in which ordinary working class people in times of difficulty all come together, and it's the solidarity that I want to remember.
SPEAKER_03And it's really that solidarity from the families that was been so important in the campaigns ever since. Um and of course, what you've been saying, Andy, as well, just backstage was the problem is this wasn't a one-off. It's systemic that people's voices get dismissed just because of where they're from or what their accent is, and the legal system is not set up. Hillsborough is not an isolated incident, is it?
SPEAKER_00No, it's it's it's not, and this is where you know kind of fate, I guess, brought us together. You know, I this book would never have been written if Peter Hayne had filled in his expenses properly for the uh campaign for the deputy leadership of the Labour Party. It's true because you know that created a reshuffle, and all of a sudden I was in culture by you know, Gordon. I always I I often imitate Gordon Brown. I've been at the launch of Liverpool Capital of Culture in January 20 2008, and I sat there that night as Echo and the Bunny Men were playing, and you were there, weren't you, as Lord Mayor? And I was sitting there thinking, why is James Pennell culture secretary and not me? You know, and I was like really kind of uh having a serious sort of uh jealousy moment. Two weeks later, I'm in the treasury where I was a minister at the time. Phone goes, Andy, it's Gordon. Uh Peter's had a problem and he's had to go. Dick will know what I mean here. Gordon always sounded like a mafia boss, you know, like he's had to had to take care of somebody, you know. Um, would you go to culture? I was like, Gordon, would I go? I mean, I I can't think of literally I ran out of the train. I was like the least suitable person ever to be in the I'm a spender, not a saver, basically. Um and uh so I go up there and then start to go to everything in Liverpool. Um, because I said to the civil servants, I won't be going to the Royal Opera House, I won't be going to you know, Sadler's Wells and what I said, I'll be in Liverpool oh yeah. And uh and I was and I started turning up at loads of events because I wanted Liverpool capital culture to be mega, you know, and that's what I was gonna go in there to do.
SPEAKER_01And I think European capital culture that's not gonna happen again, is it?
SPEAKER_00Well, I don't know. Kate made a great he's done a great deal, hasn't he? And that's so. I think we'd have to rejoin. Well, I've not read all the detail, but I don't know. First step to rejoining today, is that uh well, um which we call for. We want we call on our grandchildren to do that, don't we? But uh um no, but I was loving every minute of it, and I was turning up at all these events, and there was this fella in the chain and you know, sort of big nose, and always at these events, and uh he kept coming up to me and I kept like because the Lib Dems were in charge of Liverpool at the time, and I kept like turning away. And he comes up to me one time, he put him, will you stop ignoring me?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you were hiding from him, weren't you? For quite a while.
SPEAKER_00I was like, I thought you were a Lib Dem. If there are any Lib Dems in the world, I'm much less tribal these days, I assure you. I wouldn't be placed first. I wouldn't be I'm place first now. I was immature in in those days. But we just started to strike up a incredible friendship, didn't we, at that time? But it as I say, the randomness of West. Produced that situation. Nothing there was nothing structured about government that reopened Hillsborough. It was, in fact, they did the opposite. The Labour government closed it down, having promised to open it up in the manifesto in 1997. But then we were in an event in early 2009, and it was the moment my life changed, and my blood ran cold when he leant into my ear in Liverpool Cathedral and said, You're going to get an invite for the 20th anniversary. And for me, that was like my personal me and my professional me. You just were in a head-on, head-on collision. Because instantly I knew that the government I was in had nothing to say to the people I'd grown up with. And that's that's how I described it. You know, when in the end, my younger brother said, Go if you're gonna do something for them, he meant the families. But if you're not, don't go any do not do that. So I in the end followed his advice. But for me, you know, walking out to address the cop on that 20th anniversary, I was taking my first steps out of Westminster in in honesty, because I kind of was having to break away from that.
SPEAKER_03It was the beginning of it all.
SPEAKER_00It was the beginning of it, yeah. And um but it could I come back to it, you know. If you go with the whip system and the the sort of you know, the rigidity of that, that's why these injustices never get overturned. And it took me a while to realise the pattern. But think about it Bloody Sunday, Hillsborough, infected blood, post office, Grenfell, nuclear test veterans still unresolved. I I I found something out through Hillsborough that it wasn't, you know, in the end, I kind of came to understand how this country is wired for injustice as well as inequality because as health secretary, I had to deal with the infected blood scandal, and I was fresh from my time as culture. And I was in the Department of Health in 2010, and a note from a civil servant came up to me that contained this phrase, and I know it's accurate because I recently gave evidence to the infected blood inquiry. Nobody was knowingly given unsafe blood. That's what it said. That was a lie. And I was the Secretary of State for Health, and it took me seven years to work out that it was a lie, and actually similar tactics have been used against people who'd had infected blood products as were used against the Liverpool supporters, medical notes amended to make it look like they were drinkers. So always a tactic of the British state that, you know, a nice way of really, you know, putting a label on undermining somebody. And I, in the end, researched it all and made my sort of final speech in parliament where you know my I wasn't standing on ceremony, let's say, by that point. I probably was a bit in my early political career, but I called it a criminal cover-up on an on an industrial scale. And that came to be. But there's still one live now, the the nuclear test veterans, and maybe Steve can pick up the thread here. It's why part of the 10-point plan is a Hillsborough law, a legal requirement with criminal sanctions on police and public servants to tell the truth at the first time of asking. It's not a lot to ask, is it?
SPEAKER_03Steve, did you want to pick that up?
SPEAKER_01Yes, so people, because it's called Hillsborough Law, think it's about reopening the cases for the Hillsborough families or to try to get accountability. But unfortunately, all of the legal avenues have been exhausted. So that's never going to happen. And it's not the Hillsborough families trying to claim anything. What it is is that they are supporting this process to prevent anybody from going through what they went through for 20 or 30 odd years. And so within the Hillsborough law, it's got three bits to it, really. And so uh the duty of candor, which is you know tell the truth. I mean, we're saying to people you have to tell the truth. Wow. I mean, but there you go. Um, and then the second part of it is what Maria Eagle um put through, but Maria Eagle wanted amendments, and it was under the last government. And so the amended version of what she wanted, which was public advocacy and um accountability. So that's really important. And then the third part of it is about parity of arms, as it's called. In other words, when families, not just a Hillsborough, any families go through a process where there's been a catastrophic uh event, they have to try and find the money to support their legal cases, whilst the public authorities have the deepest pockets going. So all of the agencies uh in Hillsborough, for instance, had lots and lots of recourse to funding. Whilst people like Margaret Aspen, all of we know very well now, she got compensation, I think it was 1700 pounds for the death of her loved one. And they had to pool their resources for the legal fight. So they she didn't actually get anything because that all went to lawyers and barristers and QCs. And it's just about it's about levelling up the scales of justice in this country so that those with the deepest pockets can't continue a fight that the minnow will never win.
SPEAKER_03What's really striking is that with both the Hillsborough law and the Grenville law that you're proposing, which maybe we pick up in questions, you're actually asking for so little. Yet it seems so radical. Tell the truth, fund things equally so that justice can be achieved, give people good jobs, social care, and a good home. Is that so hard?
SPEAKER_00The thing is about about life is no one blames people for making mistakes. That that will always happen, won't it, sadly? It's the cover-up people will never justify. And that is what this is designed to uh to stop. And as Steve said, you know, it it's too easy to cover up in this country because they don't have to tell the truth. And then it's also too easy to spend taxpayers' money like confetti hiring the best KCs in the land to cement a false narrative in a in an inquest. And you can see it through the pattern of injustices that I told you about. You know, it's uh it it keeps on repeating. And this is the rewiring again that we're talking about. You know, there's a political rewiring, but there's a legal rebalancing uh to you know to give people um that equality of arms.
SPEAKER_01It's wrong, isn't it? It's wrong, though, that uh it's mainly dramas on TV. You know, so we've seen most recently with um the post office scandal. It was actually an IT TV drama that all of a sudden brought that to the public attention around politicians went, we'd better do something about this. The politicians have known about it for a long time.
SPEAKER_00It's because the country's wired to keep these things covered up. That's the problem. And that's why, you know, if we could ask one thing of you tonight, and we'd ask you to back all of our ten-point plan, wouldn't we, if you if you feel able to. But please email your MP about the importance of the Hillsborough law if you've felt able to do that. I think it would mean a great deal to us to have the backing of the people of Sheffield uh for this for this campaign. And in truth, here we will be slightly challenging towards our own government. Um so far they haven't delivered on the commitment to a full Hillsborough law. And we need to be really plain that we will not accept anything less. We will not accept a watered-down version of this bill, a bill that I introduced to Parliament in 2017. This has to be corrected. Um and actually the failure to do it costs the country more anyway in the long run, because eventually, you know, people will keep fighting, won't they? That's the amazing thing about ordinary working class British people. They will fight and they will carry on fighting until they get there, like the Hillsborough families, the blood families, the postmasters and mistresses.
SPEAKER_01But they've all come together, haven't they? All of those different families have all come together, all of those groups have all come together. We went to a day in London, didn't we? And uh they were all there. And to hear some of the testimony of what they've been put through and all the difficulties that have been created, not necessarily just because they lost somebody that they loved very dearly, but all the hurdles of state that were put in their way, all the lies, all the smears against them. Uh, and that's what the Hillsborough law does, as I say, doesn't help any of the Hillsborough families. Uh and you know, I I would think that if it was enacted, then if anybody who's unfortunate to ever have to go through one of these things, then they'd see the real benefits because that would neuter the ability of the state to scapegoat their loved ones.
SPEAKER_03So last question before we go to questions from the audience is head north the right rallying cry? There's a really complex picture of inequality across Britain, um within London as well. Um and actually head north applies to everywhere that's not London in the book, except for, as we now know, Greater Lincolnshire. Um so you know, this is a vision for anywhere in the UK. Is it is it the right rallying call?
SPEAKER_00I'm thinking of um writing a sequel in a few years called Head South, but I'm not I'm not really uh How far south do we go?
SPEAKER_03Global inequalities and poverty across the country.
SPEAKER_00I might go back to Westminster one there, who knows? But I mean, um no, I think it is the right title. Yeah, I think it should. I think it is the right uh title because um what we're saying is um the values of the people of the north should be the values upon which the rewiring of the country should be based, in my view. That's so it it's kind of come here and look at what we're doing, you know, head north. It's an invitation to come and see what devolution in the north of England is doing, and Oliver is doing here, and Tracy and every you know, this there's a lot going on. And I think what we're beginning to do is roll back the 1980s, some of the unfairnesses that we saw then. We are the first mayors to put buses under public control. I'm sure Oliver will do it here. Um, and that's a big deal. You know, none of the governments that I was in did that, and you know, we've got we've still got our two-pound bus fare in Greater Manchester. Um, it's now a hopper fair, so you only pay once in the hour. This is a big this matters a lot to people, this this kind of stuff. You know, again, the housing crisis, you know, that was started in the 1980s, wasn't it, with right to buy. And we're starting to push back on on that. We've done quite a lot to get the railways into a position where they're being renationalised. So the kind of it's an invitation to say, look, if the people of the north of England had always had the power, this country would be fundamentally different, in my view, because of the outlook on life that many many people here have. And I don't think we would have ended up taking all of those wrong turns in the 80s to a point now where you know you've got a water industry where you know it basically charges people extortionate amounts of money and leaves shit in their rivers. I mean, it's as simple as that, isn't it? You know, and and if if people can't see now that that was you know a fundamental series of wrong turns for the country, selling off life's essentials, the basics, energy, housing, water, transport, we've been left paying sky-high prices for the benefit of shareholders wherever, and life has got harder and harder and harder for people for people here. So I think it is the right, the right title to be honest.
SPEAKER_01When you say that um shareholders wherever, we know that the last government, the Tories, they did believe in nationalisation. It was just not nationalisation in this country because what they did is they allowed nationalised, well, they allowed nationalised um entities from abroad to come in and run Minnesota and run our buses and Deutsche Bank and Deutsche Bahn and all of them sort of people. They made huge and they pumped it into their systems so that they've got brilliant transport infrastructure because we were paying them to run ours. That's the problem.
SPEAKER_03Amongst many that you tackle in the book and solutions you propose. So I think for now we need to open it up to the audience to ask some questions as well. Um, thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00No problem.
SPEAKER_02Well, I hope everyone enjoyed that. It was a really interesting discussion. It was great to be in the room, to feel it's terrifying to be on stage. Sure it was. Uh I mean you you were extremely good, I have to say. Um very professional. I was very impressed. Yeah, so one of the things I like the way they started it with the metaphor of the stately home. I think that was quite clever and quite apt. You know, it made me think of this place, Wentworth Woodhouse, which is uh actually the largest, by some measures, uh stately home in the whole country. It's got this incredible frontage, it's the longest front facade. I mentioned this because there's a book written about this house, it's incredible. And it had no toilets in it, right? It didn't have flush toilets in it until the 1950s, because even though it was built in the 1700s and it had all these prime ministers and like really important people living, nobody bothered to put toilets in. And that kind of it made me think of the metaphor. It's like we do have this reverence for just the way things are when they're really old in this country. And in many ways, that is what they're saying about the British political system. I think it's very true. The thing I wanted to pick up first was actually around this idea of the basic law and the German federal model, which I found kind of interesting. I don't know that much, but we've talked about the German model in a previous podcast. My understanding is the basic law was brought in in Germany because it's a federal system where the regions have lots and lots of power, and the risk in such a system is that some regions get much richer than others, and the central governments in a federal system don't necessarily have the power to do much about that. So the basic law was giving powers to the centre to redistribute. Now, in the UK, we already have a very powerful centre, and there's nothing preventing it from doing that redistribution. So I'm I'm a bit unclear on what that basic law would really mean. I mean, I understand the desire to redistribute and so on.
SPEAKER_03But I mean, I think there's two things. My understanding is that the basic law only has the value that it requires to address spatial inequalities if you have the other aspects of the 10-point plan that they put forward. In other words, we need to move ourselves more towards the federal system for the basic law to then have that kind of function. But it raises a bigger question around the extent to which we do hold Germany up as the best practice case from which we can learn. And actually, in the rest of the book, if anybody reads it, the German example is used in several different ways and is as as as an example that we should emulate. And of course, the problem is it doesn't always work. We've covered on this podcast as well that there's a lot of issues with the rise of the far right there, just as there is here. And from my experience, you know, there's a lot of nuance in the way in which federalised and centralized systems work across Europe, um, and of course in other parts of the world as well. And it's never going to be the case that you can simply transplant one system into another. And I'm not sure you can cherry-pick ingredients. So I'd like to understand this a bit more at some point, and maybe we need to get some other kinds of expertise in to help us think that through.
SPEAKER_02I think taking something that's come out of a federal system to try and bring some power to the centre to redistribute it doesn't kind of make sense to me in this context. But anyway, we need to we need to know more. Yeah. And of course, they are trying to overcome really major uh regional inequalities in Germany, and this was part of that. And in a sense, that's what these guys are doing.
SPEAKER_03But the nature of those inequalities is the other thing, perhaps, just to reflect upon. It's this idea that to what extent is head north the right rallying cry. Um, and I think for me that speaks to a more nuanced understanding of the nature of spatial inequalities in the UK. Because a lot of the traditional discourse has been north-south divide. And they argue very powerfully for why that is a structural problem, and I agree with much of that analysis. But as a rallying core, we have to recognise that inequality is much more spatially diverse around coastal regions, in X-mining towns, in rural areas, and even within some of those sort of big city regions themselves.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and I mean the thing that really uh struck me about that, um, and speaks to issues we've talked about in this podcast and cases we've talked about in this podcast, is the the difference between cores and peripheries within regions, including within the north. So, as many people here will know, um, when the debates were happening about HS2, the major rail um service that was supposed to connect the north to London, there were big debates about where to site that within Sheffield, because in some locations it would benefit Sheffield to the at possibly at the expense of surrounding towns and cities. Other locations might have brought those places in more. But connecting Manchester better, connecting Sheffield better, doesn't automatically mean good things for Rotherham, for Doncaster, for Barnsley. We've talked about the Manchester model, the centropital city, the fact that you can get all this funding and resource into the core, and it can actually negatively impact sometimes, um, or certainly not bring obvious benefits trickling out. As mayors of regions, I think Andy, Burnham, and Steve Rotherham will both be acutely aware of those core periphery dynamics. But I wanted to just hear a little bit more about how you would mitigate the risk that the core cities still end up drawing a lot of resource away from their regions.
SPEAKER_03And I think that's interesting because, in a way, that's about horizontal sort of power relations, but there's also something about the relationship between the new city regional authorities, local governments, and people directly. And we didn't hear very much about kind of citizen participation or other forms of sort of democratic empowerment that might be required at the local level or the hyper-local level to address some of the big challenges we have. That's understandable at one level because they're so preoccupied with arguing with and negotiating with treasury and central government, but it does raise this bigger question around local democracy at one level.
SPEAKER_02Some of the things you were just talking about in terms of the nature of local democracy make me think about this kind of bigger question of decentralization, differences between political and administrative and economic decentralization. And actually, we got into a bit of a word war about this, didn't we? We have done.
SPEAKER_03It was quite fun via WhatsApp. So the best way to do the work. I've actually never texted someone for so long about decentralization.
SPEAKER_02But I think what we were talking about, by the way, in the last episode, around government departments being moved around the country, is what you call deconcentration. You're not actually giving power to another tier of authority below the central government. It's all part of central government. But what's interesting is that the way Steve and Andy talked about, you know, they they felt that as regional entities, they'd been given responsibilities and kind of administrative responsibilities in the past, but they hadn't had real power. So there hadn't been meaningful devolution or what you might call political decentralization. Those are the kind of terms I would use. But I'm also conscious that I've heard about decentralization from an international development context where, you know, donors talk about it and advise governments about it in a particular way in Africa, for example. And here the words might be used differently.
SPEAKER_03Well, I think there's two things there. One is like uh what is a good concept for? I've actually written a paper on this, little plug. Um but some concepts are, you know, it's really important to define them very, very carefully. So we have some amazing typologies in the academic literature about the difference between deconcentration and decentralization and devolution. But actually, in practice, the words are used very differently. And in the UK context, in English context in particular, devolution is used politically to argue for something that doesn't yet exist. So if you read the critique, yes, it's true. It's not true devolution in that sense, but that's what everybody wants to happen. And it's really all of these words are about power. Who has it? Where is it? Is it in the centre? Is it in the regions? Is it within local communities? It's all about power. So the word war can maybe go on, but it's not actually that relevant to people's everyday lives. It just depends whether they can be involved in making decisions in places and over issues that affect them. I think the other big thing, this this point about international development, um, which was something I kind of would have got into if I'd had more time with them, I made a throwaway comment at some point about well, how far south do you head? And I think there is a bigger question for us as urban scholars to think through on what basis regional disparities in the north might be addressed if some of the industries that we are investing in to grow our economies are actually also based on supply chains that extract value from racialized bodies in the global south. So there are industries that we might invest in here that have very problematic supply chains, and AI and rare minerals and all that sort of thing are very classic examples of that. So I think we we can't actually just think about heading north without thinking about the global north and what role it's playing in a kind of economic system. And I think that's maybe one of the things that I'm reflecting on is that some of the changes in this recommended in this 10-point plan are framed within a very different political system. That's what's being argued for, but the economic system is the same one, really. It's just vaguely improved.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean, there are a whole load of questions about what this northern growth and this northern investment that would equalize it with the rest of the country would mean in terms of global responsibilities and in terms of the UK and its role. We've we there are a lot of assumptions about London and London-centricness that feed into our so-called soft power, our relationship with the rest of the country. And the fact that everybody is in this bubble and thinks in a certain way is part of Britain's relationship with the wider world as well. So, how does that change if we discussed the case? Absolutely.
SPEAKER_03Classic example, there's a there's a bit of an online storm going on at the moment about whether or not places like Sheffield should be happy that they're going to be the beneficiaries of increased defence spending. Whose lives are ruined through that kind of investment, whether it comes to Sheffield or whether it goes to London.
SPEAKER_02I've been thinking about that a lot, and we raised it on a was it our first episode? But this this question of massive and when we're talking about, you know, tens of billions of dollars of increased defence spending. Now, a lot of that will go to cities outside of the South. And that, you know, is it's really gives us pause for thought about some of the implications more than that.
SPEAKER_03It really does. I mean, Tom, we're in danger of going into another radar. But I think we better wrap up there. Um, just want to thank the Festival of Debate again. It really is a great festival. Um, runs each year, run by Opus Independence. Um, and also the Octagon for the recording and for uh sharing it with us, and for Andy and Steve for giving us their permission.
SPEAKER_02Thanks everybody. I hope you've enjoyed this special feature and the new twice-a-month format. And uh yeah, we'll be back uh next month with an urban radar and a feature.
SPEAKER_03Absolutely. You can follow us the usual ways and tune in next time.
SPEAKER_02Bye.