Mary Southcott on mayors with ideas and a manifesto for action
Born only streets apart, Andy in Fazakerley where the Rabbit came from in Liverpool 10, and Steve Rotheram from Kirkby, where the song says they play “tick with hatchets”, supporting different football teams, Everton and Liverpool, Andy and Steve seem unlikely friends or joint authors of a book* advocating agreed progressive change. They end up having more in common than divides them.
They were both elected to the Commons, Andy in the 1997 General Election landslide which meant he served in Brown’s Cabinet, and Steve in 2010, having been Liverpool councillor for Fazakerley, Lord Mayor during Liverpool’s Capital of Culture year in 2002 and Parliamentary Political Secretary to Labour Leader, Jeremy Corbyn. They both fought for justice for the Hillsborough families after the football disaster on 15 April 1989. They left the Commons at the 2017 general election to fight for Greater Manchester and Liverpool City Region as elected Mayors.
This book has received a lot of coverage and it comes recommended by Gordon Brown, after he chaired and produced the report of the Commission on the UK’s Future, the Brown Report. A Democracy Bill was floated for the 2024 King’s Speech it was dropped, along with automatic registration, and reversal of the Conservative changes back to first past the post for Mayoral and Police and Crime Commissioner elections. The two mayors prioritise devolution, and having an assembly which would in future coordinate nations and regions. Prospects are thought remote given that Labour has been the massive beneficiary of an outdated voting system which depends on where different parties put their efforts to establish themselves in first and second place. So the 2024 result could be reversed by a six per cent swing in 2029 without any safeguards.
Those of us who thought that English regional government offered a better chance of bringing people together especially where there was no former metropolitan authority, have been impressed with the way elected mayors offered an alternative view to the government in the last five years. We would like to see more than other combined authorities filling in the gaps. Perhaps Regions, often with larger populations than Scotland, could be recognised in some way: perhaps in the top up of an Additional Member System for electing MPs or regional Q&As with regional representatives coming together in a Grand Committee. Margaret Thatcher did away with this layer in 1986 along with the Greater London Council, despite opposition in her own party, and some say the Queen. For Greater London this has been partially reversed. We have done the same for the other met counties. But Bristol, the largest non-metropolitan council, had two mayors, one recently rejected by referendum and the other almost a reconstruction of the old Avon.
More people need to respond to the Head North manifesto for real change to happen, a total rewiring, their mission from 2017. They were inspired by the Hillsborough relatives who sought justice, just like the other “burning injustices”, the post office workers, Orgreave victims, haemophiliacs who were given blood infected with HIV, the Windrush generation. They talked with equivalent mayors in the States and learned from Germany where the Basic Law, Grundgesetz, states there needs to be equivalent living standards between all the German Lander. It was Britain, the Allies, who gave them their constitution, their voting system and their version of devolution, to prevent any possibility of the power concentrated at the centre being seized by a fascist dictator.
The HEAD NORTH MANIFESTO
- A Written Constitution
- A Basic Law
- Reform of the Voting System
- Removal of the Whip
- A Senate of the Nations and Regions
- Full Devolution
- Two Equal Paths in Education
- A Grenfell Law
- A Hillsborough Law
- Net Zero to Reindustrialise the North
Each of these ten points involves a transfer of centralised power towards a more functional politics of place. There is also emphasis on safety standards in Design and Construction for public buildings, and their management and policing, of high rise flats and sports stadia. On the constitutional side their manifesto is not too different from the Brown Report, the Commission on the UK’s Future. Head North has 264 pages compared with the 150 pages of the Brown Report but theirs is much more accessible because seen through the eyes of the authors. It is fulfilling their pledge to change Westminster from the outside. It is about a mindset change but also a transformation of political culture. People as usual are ahead of the politicians. Non inclusive decision making risks mistakes which cost lives and cover ups waste money in the end. Their letter to their grandchildren is about giving people equal treatment and equal living standards across the regions and nation. Anything wrong with that?
Picked as one of Waterstones’ Non-Fiction ‘Books You Need to Read in 2024’ After reading James O’Brien’s How They Broke Britain, Tom Baldwin’s Biography of Keir Starmer, and Will Hutton’s No Mistakes This Time, Head North must clearly be next on my reading list.