Afleveringen
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Ahead of the General Election on July 4th, we’re taking a look at one of the key policies from the 2019 Conservative manifesto.
Levelling up promised to boost Britain’s “left behind” areas, and helped Boris Johnson storm to victory as voters in former Labour heartlands turned to the Tories in droves.
You can find out more by listening to our episode from April 2022, titled “Levelling up: what it really means for the north”
But have the Conservatives actually managed to deliver on their promise since then? The North in Numbers takes over the podcast this week, with Annie Gouk speaking to local leaders, policy experts and academics to find out how it’s going.
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This week Rob Parsons joins 13,000 (mostly blue suit-wearing) delegates from the business and political worlds at a major property conference in Leeds - the UK's Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum.
The likes of Angela Rayner and Alastair Campbell were among the speakers at the three-day event at Leeds' Royal Armouries - which saw hectic networking amid the torrential downpours as local leaders pitched for investment to get major projects off the ground.
It was an event that showed how much the North's politicians need private investment to make their local areas thrive. And Rob talks over some of the highlights with Alistair Houghton, editor of the Business Live website, and Manchester Local Democracy Reporter Ethan Davies.
Also listen out to hear about a fascinating new book about Manchester, a city whose recent economic growth and gleaming skyscrapers attract envious glances from many parts of the North, even if they wouldn't admit it publicly.
Brian Groom, author of the best-selling 'Northerners', talks about his latest offering 'Made In Manchester: A People’s History of the City that Shaped the Modern World'.
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Most of us spend our days with a mobile phone practically glued to our hand - in fact you may well be listening to this podcast on it right now. And it's becoming more and more common for children to have a smart phone, some even before they start at secondary school.
But there are more and more people who are terrified at what the ubiquity of smart phones and social media is doing to our children's minds, their mental health and their ability to learn.
And one of the politicians articulating those fears most vocally is an MP in South Yorkshire, Miriam Cates, who this week led a debate at Westminster calling on the Government to take urgent action before it's too late.
Rob Parsons speaks to her and also a former Yorkshire headteacher whose school introduced an effective ban on smart phones because of what it was doing to students' behaviour.
And he chats to Local Democracy Reporter Dan Holland about one of the more interesting developments in Northern politics this week, namely the relationship between civic and business leaders in the North East of England and the oil-rich Gulf state of Saudi Arabia.
We know Manchester's booming economy has been achieved thanks in large part to massive private investment encouraged by city leaders, including the Abu Dhabi royal family who now own Manchester City Football Club. But is something similar on the verge of happening in the football-mad city of Newcastle - and why are many in the North opposed to it?
The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons, and produced by Daniel J. McLaughlin.
You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/
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We're a week on from the local and mayoral elections and the dust is still settling on a set of results which dealt another major blow to Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives.
And it was the election of metro mayors - the political figureheads for big regions like the North East, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire - which made most of the headlines.
But while most Westminster pundits - and Rishi Sunak himself, are preoccupied with what these results mean for the upcoming General Election, there's a lot less attention being paid to the mayors themselves. Who are they, what are their policies and why are people voting for them, if they bother to vote at all? And do they really know how to run their regions better than Westminster?
This week as the new mayors got back to work after the elections Rob Parsons speaks to one of them, South Yorkshire's Oliver Coppard, about why he's prioritising transport in his second term.
And Rob gets the bigger picture with three brilliant guests:
Jen Williams, Northern Correspondent for the Financial Times, who wrote a great piece last week about how the mayoral elections mark a milestone for English devolution and has taken a particular interest in the affairs of Tees Valley Ben Houchen.
Gill Morris, executive chair of Devo Inflect, the UK's leading devolution public affairs agency.
Professor Katy Shaw from Northumbria University is one of the experts who helped write Gordon Brown's commission on the UK's future, setting out plans for sweeping constitutional change, which Labour leader Keir Starmer has promised to implement.
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Rob Parsons reports from a sports hall in the town of Thornaby-on-Tees - where he's witnessed perhaps the only bright spot for Rishi Sunak in what was a miserable local and mayoral election night for his Conservative Party.
The Tories look to be on course to lose 500 local election seats in what could be their worst showing in 40 years. They were thrashed in the Blackpool South by-election and even managed to lose the mayoral race in Rishi Sunak's backyard in North Yorkshire.
But there was a silver lining in the form of Ben Houchen, described by many as the poster-boy for Conservatism in the North of England, who was re-elected mayor of the Tees Valley region but saw his majority over Labour dramatically cut, securing almost 82,000 votes compared with the 63,000 votes received by Labour’s Chris McEwan.
Rob hears directly from Lord Houchen after his victory and watches a remarkable confrontation between the mayor and one of his main critics, journalist Richard Brooks of Private Eye.
There's also voice notes from local journalists Joseph Timan in Greater Manchester and Susan Newton at the Blackpool South by-election.
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This week Rob Parsons focuses on the parts of the country where millions of us live - the so-called coalfield or ex-mining communities - and find out what the future holds for them.
There's a new report out this week from the Coalfields Regeneration Trust setting out how the areas whose miners used to power industrial Britain are still lagging behind the big cities when it comes to jobs. But crucially they have a vision for how they can catch up, and Rob speaks to Andy Lock from the charity to hear what needs to happen.
Also, there's a week to go until large parts of the North go to the polls on May 2 and there's plenty on the line - not just in places like the Tees Valley and North East which are electing metro mayors but also towns and cities where control of local councils is at stake.
But where are the most interesting races in the North and how much do they matter? Rob is joined by Jonathan Carr-West, Chief Executive of the Local Government Information Unit - a not-for-profit organisation which produces an annual report on the local council elections to watch.
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Which political story should we be paying more attention to: the saga of Angela Rayner's council house in Stockport or that of Lancashire MP Mark Menzies, who is accused of using political donations to cover medical expenses and pay off “bad people” who had locked him in a flat and demanded thousands of pounds for his release?
This week Rob Parsons compares the merits of these two stories with the Liverpool Echo's Liam Thorp. Meanwhile Liam tells us why he believes it was right to identify two local politicians who failed to pay council tax and why 'XL Gullies' are proving a menace to hungry workers in Liverpool city centre.
PLUS: Regular listeners to the podcast will have heard about lots of different examples of the North of England being on the wrong end of stark regional inequality. But it's still shocking to find out there are big differences in the numbers of vulnerable children going into care between our region and other parts of the country.
A new report sets out how one in every 52 children in Blackpool is in care compared with one in 140 across England, while the North of England accounts for just over a quarter (28%) of the child population, but more than a third (36%) of the children in care.
There's a human cost but an economic one too. Researchers for Health Equity North say if the North of England had experienced the same rates of children entering care as the South between 2019 and 2023, “it would have saved at least £25 billion”.
To find out why this is happening Rob speaks to one of the authors of the report, Professor David Taylor-Robinson from the University of Liverpool.
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This week, Rob Parsons speaks to an author who's asked the question: How did the North become a place of lost potential and broken dreams? And what can be done to make it one of the most dynamic and forward-looking places in the world once again?
Alex Niven is the man behind the book The North Will Rise Again, which covers the colourful adventures of its inhabitants, the expansiveness and optimism that defines Northern culture,
A native Northerner himself, having returned to his home city of Newcastle with his family in the last few years, Alex explores issues like radical regionalism, Northern identity austerity, the impact of Brexit, the collapse of Labour's 'Red Wall', and calls for regional devolution.
Meanwhile, with a General Election coming this year and Labour miles ahead in the polls, it's high time we scrutinised what a change of Government might mean for the North of England.
It's been very easy for Keir Starmer's Labour Party to slam the failings of levelling up and the promises of the Boris Johnson Government that failed to materialise, but voters up here deserve to know exactly what the Opposition would do differently if they got into power.
So how much do we know about Labour's policies which might affect the North? Someone who's been looking at just that subject is Joseph Timan, political writer for the Manchester Evening News, he tells Rob what we've learned.
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This week the Northern Agenda podcast comes from the headquarters of the North East's Chronicle and Journal newspapers in the centre of Newcastle for a special mayoral hustings edition.
In a month's time one of the five people speaking to Rob Parsons over the conference room table will be the new elected mayor of the North East.
They'll have powers and funding - some £4.2bn over 30 years - to impact the lives of millions of people in a huge patch stretching from Berwick to Barnard Castle.
So the stakes will be high when voters across Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland pick their preferred candidate - meaning there is all the more reason to know who they are and what they'll do if they get into power.
Joining Rob Parsons for the hustings is Jamie Driscoll, the independent candidate who is currently mayor of the North of Tyne, university archivist Andrew Gray standing for the Green Party and Dr Aidan King, who works at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary for the Liberal Democrats.
Labour's candidate is Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner Kim McGuinness and for the Conservatives we have Northumberland County Councillor Guy Renner Thompson. Sunderland councillor Paul Donaghy, who is Reform UK's candidate, couldn't make it so has sent in a recorded message.
Hear them set out how they'd approach the job and their position on the big issues that will likely matter to voters, including answers to questions sent in by Chronicle and Journal readers.
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In the next few months as the impending General Election dominates our politics, The Northern Agenda podcast is going on the road.
Across the North of England voters will be going to the polls five years on from the dramatic 2019 election where large swathes of our region broke the habit of decades by switching their allegiance from Labour to the Tories, putting Boris Johnson into Downing Street in the process.
If the polls are anything to go by, those so-called 'red wall' seats are now set to go back to Labour - plus a few more besides.
But polling can only tell us so much about what’s happened in the North in the last 5 years.
We want to hear from these Northern communities directly so between now and the election The Northern Agenda will be going to key seats around the North, we might even venture into the Midlands, to find out what’s making them tick.
First stop for Northern Agenda Editor Rob Parsons is the seaside resort of Blackpool, where there will soon be an early electoral test for Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak.
In just a few weeks there’s going to be a by-election in the Blackpool South constituency after its MP, Conservative Scott Benton, was caught by The Times newspaper offering to lobby ministers and table parliamentary questions on behalf of gambling investors.
But there’s more reason to care about Blackpool than just political intrigue - it tells us a fascinating story about the decline of coastal towns and the challenges facing the so-called ‘levelling up’ agenda. So have a listen as The Northern Agenda takes the temperature at the country’s most popular seaside resort.
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Why is it that bright young people from the North are so much less likely to apply for our two most prestigious universities, Cambridge and Oxford, than their counterparts in the South East and London?
It's a question that gets right to the heart of our North-South divide and this week on the podcast Rob Parsons tries to answer it with the help of a Cambridge University academic who got a place there as a working class daughter of a cleaner from Greater Manchester.
Director of Admissions at Cambridge's Pembroke College, Dr Caroline Burt, is now trying to ensure more people like her follow the same path.
She also has a book out, calle 'Arise, England: Six Kings and the Making of the English State' - find out more about it at this link.
The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons. This week's episode is produced by Celeste Adams
You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/
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This week Rob Parsons finds out about a new museum display celebrating the trailblazing contributions of Muslims living and working in the North of England.
Leeds City Museum’s Voices of Asia Gallery is hosting Muslims in the North, which explores the pioneering work of prominent Muslims in fields including commerce, healthcare, law and research.
Maria Hussain, lecturer in management and organisations at the University of Leeds Business School, whose research underpinned this display, tells Rob how she hopes the exhibit will help people in the North appreciate cultural diversity and explains her aim of "decolonising civic spaces".
Plus: Is Boris Johnson really going to be campaigning for Rishi Sunak in the North ahead of the General Election? Has Levelling Up failed? And should we be letting 16-year-olds vote in parish council elections?
Rob talks over these big issues from the news this week with Henri Murison, chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership.
The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons, and produced by Daniel J. McLaughlin.
You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/
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This week Rob Parsons speaks to two political best mates who were born just a few miles away from each other in Liverpool and have gone on to be two of the best-known elected figures in our region.
Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and Steve Rotheram, mayor of the Liverpool City Region, have teamed up to write a new book where they share their formative experiences and set out an ambitious ten-point plan to rewire and reimagine our country beyond the Westminster bubble.
Their book Head North, which is out today, sets out how both men were shaped in different ways by the Hillsborough disaster and how we can spread political and economic power throughout the UK, away from the centre of power in London and towards the North.
The timing for the book is pretty interesting - both men are up for election in a few weeks and there's a General Election not far away where they might hope some of their radical ideas could become Labour policy.
Find out what they thought of each other when they first met, how Keir Starmer might react to their radical ideas and their take on the row over Labour abandoning its £28bn-a-year green jobs pledge.
The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons, and produced by Daniel J. McLaughlin.
You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/
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This week the focus of Northern politicians is on Leeds, where the Convention of the North will see hundreds of the region's political and business leaders try and work out how to make our region a powerhouse again.
Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove and Labour's Deputy Leader Angela Rayner will be making their pitch about what their parties can do for the North at the two-day Convention of the North conference.
But a report out today from the IPPR North think-tank sets out how far there still is to go and says it will be 2080 - a full five decades away - before the gap in healthy life expectancy between the North and the South East really changes.
The question is, what do we do about it? And this week on the podcast Rob Parsons speaks to Richards Stubbs, CEO of Health Innovation Yorkshire and the Humber, one of the organisations behind a new report that says focusing our attention on creating high-skilled jobs is the best way to get the North off its collective sick bed.
The research prompts the intriguing question, if we want to save the NHS in the North of England do we need better hospitals, or better train links?
But in terms of the national media, the only story in town as far as the North is concerned is the absolute chaos of the Rochdale by-election, where, as you might remember from our episode two weeks ago, what started out as a safe Labour seat has now seen the party without a candidate and voters subjected to one of the most divisive election campaigns in recent years.
Joseph Timan of the Manchester Evening News sends in a dispatch about who won as firebrand former Labour MP George Galloway bids to pull off a shock upset to return him to Parliament.
The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons, and produced by Daniel J. McLaughlin.
You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/
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This week the Northern Agenda switches focus away from the two main political parties to one that seems to be gathering momentum and hopes to do some real damage to the Conservatives at the next General Election.
Reform UK, founded by Nigel Farage as the Brexit Party back in 2018 and renamed in 2020 to campaign against lockdown measures during the Covid pandemic, came third in two Parliamentary by-elections last week and has promised to field a candidate in every single constituency at the next General Election.
We know Reform is anti-lockdown, pro-Brexit, in favour of slashing taxes and leans into a number of divisive culture war issues. But does it have any policies to improve the lives of people in the North of England?
This weekend it's holding a big spring conference in Doncaster and ahead of the event Rob Parsons talks to one of the main speakers, the Talk TV host Alex Phillips who is now one of the party's most high profile members.
Rob asks her about the involvement of Nigel Farage in the party, how Reform plans to hurt the Tories at the ballot box and why the party would support an end to the ban on fracking, the highly controversial technique for extracting shale gas in places like North Yorkshire and Lancashire that caused huge protest before being ruled out by the Conservative government in 2019.
Plus, Yorkshire Conservative councillor Tom Jones explains why Reform may not have the impact they're hoping for - and what his party can do to stop them taking votes off them at the next election.
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The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons, and produced by Daniel J. McLaughlin.
You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/
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In big cities like Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, and Leeds the last few years have seen huge amounts of regeneration, transforming them beyond recognition.
But what about our region's larger satellite towns and smaller cities, many with a proud tradition and history that stretches back to before the Industrial Revolution? With town centres that went into decline in recent years, thanks in part to the rise of retail parks and online shopping - isn't it about time they were brought up to date to meet our changing demands?
St Helens, with a population of about 180,000 people between Liverpool and Manchester, is in many ways a typical Northern market town. It's in the next wave of areas bringing forward large-scale regeneration plans with town centre markets at the heart of it.
But our habits have changed rapidly in recent years so how will they make this new project fit for 2024 and beyond? Rob Parsons speaks to leading officials behind the plans.
Also, with the Rochdale by-election making headlines this week, Rob chats to Jo Timan of the Manchester Evening News about what locals make of it - and would firebrand George Galloway make a good MP?
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The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons, and produced by Daniel J. McLaughlin.
You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/
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Have you ever wondered how award-winning cartoonist Graeme Bandeira comes up with his ideas for this weekly dose of satire in the Northern Agenda newsletter?
There have been some crackers in the last year - Environment Secretary Therese Coffey dancing down Redcar beach surrounded by dead crabs, Nadine Dorries throwing her toys out of the pram after not getting a peerage and Michael Gove and Rishi Sunak stripping down to the bare essentials as they re-enacted the Full Monty in Sheffield.
This week on the podcast you can go behind the scenes as we record the weekly cartoon conference Graeme holds with Northern Agenda Editor Rob Parsons.
And as a special guest to help come up with this week's cartoon, we've got none other than Matt Chorley, one of the country's very top political journalists, a presenter on Times Radio - including a podcast called Politics Without the Boring Bits - and a comedian whose show Poll Dancer about politics is touring next month and includes some dates up North.
You can check out the finished product they come up with on Friday lunchtime in the newsletter - sign up at www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk.
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For anyone interested in the politics of our region there's really only one story in town this week, that's the long-awaited - and long-delayed - report into the murky goings-on at Teesworks, the flagship regeneration project in the North East.
The headline news - at least if you're a Conservative supporter of the scheme - is that it cleared those involved of corruption and illegality.
But the 97-page document was not a clean bill of health and in fact had a shopping list as long as your arm of failings in the way the project is being run. It came out two days ago and the slanging match over the report's findings is still going on as we record this podcast.
Rob Parsons looks at the question, what next for Teesworks, with Jen Williams from the Financial Times, whose reporting brought some of these issues into the open, Graeme Whitfield, North East Editor of Business Live, and Jack Shaw, a local government expert who specialises in examining the inner workings of our local authorities.
The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons, and produced by Daniel J. McLaughlin.
You can subscribe to the daily Northern Agenda newsletter here: http://www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk/
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Is it harder for Northerners to have their voices heard in literature and comedy because of age-old regional biases? That's the question on The Northern Agenda podcast this week with two guests who've explored that thorny topic with academic rigour.
Jen Bowden, a journalist and writer from a small pit village called Wingate in County Durham, hosts the Northern Voices podcast but is also working on her PhD looking at the use of Northern dialect in contemporary UK fiction and biases against the North in the UK book industry.
And poet, author and comedian Kate Fox, who was born in Bradford and grew up in Yorkshire and Cumbria, has a book out called Where There’s Muck, There’s Bras: True Stories of the Amazing Women of the North. Her PhD looked at a similar subject, namely why it’s harder for Northern comedians to be heard due to age old biases.
In conversation with The Northern Agenda's Daniel J. McLaughlin, himself a stand-up poet in Manchester, they discuss the unconscious biases standing in the way of people from the North trying to tell their stories on a national stage.
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This week Rob Parsons gets listeners up to speed on what could be the most consequential and interesting election in the first half of this year - unless of course Rishi Sunak is forced to call an early General Election in the next few weeks.
On May 2 the North East will go to the polls to choose the region's first ever metro mayor, with a host of new powers devolved from Westminster and a multi-billion pound war chest to spend.
Unlike many of the elections for the North's metro mayors it's going to be a closely-fought dramatic battle and one with high stakes - as the winner will have the chance to transform a region that for so many decades has felt left behind and ignored by decision-makers in government.
But whoever is elected will also lead a new mayoral authority with a big budget whose arrival will shake up the political landscape in the North East.
Rob speaks to the man in charge of setting up that new body - Dr Henry Kippin - for a rare interview about how the North East devolution deal will work and practice, what it will mean for people locally and how the new mayor will be held to account.
And one of the North East's most knowledgeable political journalists, Dan Holland, the Local Democracy Reporter for Newcastle and the North East, sets the scene with a summary of the protracted and tortuous process that finally saw local leaders agree a deal with government.
If you like the Northern Agenda podcast, why not leave a written review wherever you get your podcasts as it helps us get Northern politics in front of more people. And don’t forget, you can subscribe to our daily newsletter at www.thenorthernagenda.co.uk.
The Northern Agenda is a Laudable production for Reach. It is presented by Rob Parsons - and this week's episode was edited and produced by Celeste Adams.
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