Some commentators have glibly written the Northern Powerhouse agenda off as an entirely political project. The aim, according to this narrative, is to palm off difficult decisions onto new regional structures, to deprive the Labour Party of its assumed right to rule in the North and to trade political asks (e.g. elected mayors) for budgetary freedoms. This view is compounded by the long memory of Tory opposition to Labour’s regional agenda. The Conservatives opposed Scottish and Welsh devolution (despite its huge popularity in Scotland, and narrow majority in Wales), and by the time they were opposing the North East Regional Assembly, their views seemed in line with the English voter. Anxiety that Tony Blair’s plan for a UK of the regions was to pave the way for a Federal Europe of the Regions played its part in stoking Tory antipathy.
The cynical perspective is not wholly wrong – political motivations do play an important part, as they do for Osborne in all his calculations. But it does not tell the whole story. The Northern Powerhouse agenda is a more complex amalgam of Tory and Blairite thinking and it has a long history in three strands: state interventionism as embodied in Michael Heseltine; libertarian localism imported from the United States; a Blairite appetite for breaking-up vested interests and recalibrating power structures.
It was Heseltine who was dubbed the “Minister for Merseyside” following his decision to impose Development Corporations on cities, including Liverpool, in response to the 1981 Toxteth riots. This top-down approach has been closely followed with the Northern Powerhouse. While the real pioneers of Tory Localism are at odds with Osborne on some points, they are satisfied that their ideas around free schools, locally accountable healthcare and sheriffs (in the form of Police and Crime Commissioners) have taken root. And other elements of radical localism are evident in City Deals – the removal of ring-fenced budgets, a hands off approach to devolved funding and greater dependence on locally-raised revenue. Finally, the fact that the Whitehall establishment is behind the programme reflects that is has learnt the lessons of Blair’s experiments with regionalism.
And the team in charge of the Northern Powerhouse for the Tories reflects this evolution: Heseltine is back, chairing the Tees Valley Inward Investment Panel, the Regeneration Panel and acting as panjandrum sage on revitalising our cities. Alongside him is Treasury Minister Lord Jim O’Neill, a former critic of austerity and widely seen as on the centre-left before his ennoblement, who brings with him the same cross-party, establishment credibility that Lord Adonis brings to the National Infrastructure Commission. Greg Clark keeps the candle burning for de-centralisation and James Wharton adds an MP whose constituency is north of the A66.
Is the Northern Powerhouse a political ploy, a centralising plan, a power-grab or an earnest desire to devolve power closer to the people? Well, it’s a little bit of each – like most practical politics, a set of ideas held in tension, packaged and presented as a coherent plan. And whose plan is it? Well that depends if it works or not…