There is a renaissance happening in the north-west and, last summer, I decided to leave London and return to my roots there. I was born and brought up in the southern suburbs of Greater Manchester but, aged 18, I frankly couldn’t wait to leave. I was the first person in my family to go to university and that was my ticket out. Manchester in the late 1980s was rightly famous for indie music and clubs like the Hacienda, but life for many people was pretty grim. The city seemed on a downward spiral – more Morrissey than Happy Mondays.
I had the privilege of coming from a loving and comfortable home, so a few months spent volunteering at a church on a tough Salford estate in my year off was quite a shock. It’s one thing to read about inner city deprivation, quite another to see and hear and smell it up close and personal. It confirmed for me that Tory rule was blighting communities, undermining families and damaging lives.
Some 18 years later, and most recently having spent four fantastic years working for our Labour government, I chose to spend more time in the north-west: partly to see more of my family; partly to try and become an MP; and partly to make a small contribution to that north-west renaissance, which really began when Labour took office in 1997. So in June, I quit my job as a special adviser, becoming an ex-SPAD or ‘spaduate’. I set about renting out my flat in Kilburn and planned to spend the summer on the beach. But as so often in politics, events intervened.
The week after the transition from Blair to Brown, the search for a new Labour candidate in Liverpool West Derby began and, along with 53 others, I applied. After my spell in the parallel universe of Westminster, spending six weeks chatting with transparently decent, straight-talking party members in one of our great northern cities was a real tonic. Their pride in Labour and in Liverpool was palpable, and I was relieved how warm they were towards a Mancunian, New Labour ex-bag carrier straight out of Whitehall. I even met a lovely lady who received one of those notorious Liverpool city council redundancy notices, issued by Derek Hatton via taxi and excoriated by Neil Kinnock in his brilliant 1985 Bournemouth speech.
Three particular aspirations kept cropping up in conversation with these party members. First, they want local youngsters to have more skills training and more apprenticeships so they can get good jobs now that Merseyside is prospering again. There is genuine anxiety that another generation of Liverpool workers will miss out on work if local people are overlooked in favour of labour imported from other parts of the UK or Europe.
Second, they want a Labour council again, to champion regeneration and investment in public services in the most deprived parts of Liverpool, rather than obsessing about the city centre as the Lib Dems have done. Capital of Culture is a fantastic thing for Liverpool but it’s not going to deliver new housing or end the drug-fuelled gang violence in Norris Green and Croxteth. Some looked enviously down the East Lancs Road to Manchester, where an impressive Labour council has worked closely with our Labour government to begin the transformation of that city, as the party will see again during annual conference in September.
And third, they want ministers to rediscover their zeal for a fairer and more equal Britain, and not to be afraid to say that remains their overriding goal. As one member said to me, ‘if Labour does not stand for fairness, who will? And if Labour is not committed to reducing inequality, why bother?’ Amen to that, and of course the good sense of West Derby CLP was proven when they selected Stephen Twigg.
Support for Labour remains high in the north-west, and the difference that progressive politics can make to people’s lives and opportunities is evident, underpinned by steady economic growth. For progressives, the north-west is booming, too. The region has more Labour MPs than any other, there are seven north-west members of the cabinet and there is no sign of the Tories winning support. Cameron and Osborne have been working hard on Manchester but they’ve only just got their first Tory councillor for 12 years in the city because a Lib Dem defected this month.
So for this ‘recovering SPAD’ it’s a joy to be putting down fresh roots in the north-west, spending at least three days a week working in Manchester, looking for a permanent home – and local CLP – in the city and finding ways to make a difference in the local community (one option may be to serve as a governor of a new academy destined for a site in Salford right next to the new BBC campus).
It may be premature to claim that the north-west is the new north-east – let alone the new Scotland – but Labour in the north-west is strong and it’s good to be part of it again.