Like everyone else I read with dismay the comments about the report from the think tank suggesting a north-south migration. Apart from being an illogical idea for the reasons David Ottewell outlined, it’s surely what all politicians have been trying to subvert for the last two decades. As a Northerner, and also a Conservative, I find the report more irritating than most. It may as well be from a different planet in comparison to the Conservative Party’s policy and approach to the North and to regeneration.
Metrolink (1995), The Velodrome, the Commonwealth Games, Bridgewater Hall (1994), transforming Hulme, the saving of Castlefield and creation of city living are all down to the Conservatives regeneration plans instituted pre-1997. Many argue that Liverpool is doing a better job of the work begun by the Conservatives Development Corporations, connecting the initial Albert Dock developement to the rest of the city in a far more effective way than has existed in Castlefield, with the latter essentially becoming a closed housing estate.
Since 1997 no new strategy has existed, (no completion of the Metrolink plans laid down before 1997) and the great increase in mobility and wealth this city enjoys is from the great strides made during that time, unimaginable prior to that period. The current refusal to invest in our city (via the TIF bid) without making Mancunians borrow the money and then pay it back, plus taxing them for the privilege is at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum to the approach that made Manchester what it is today – which is why the Conservatives oppose the blackmail intrinsic in those plans. Only genuine investment in our northern cities will produce further growth and strides towards the future.
Gordon Brown’s strategy for the north has been dreadful. The plug pulled on investment in our city, no Metro extensions as promised, the Casino plan withdrawn with nothing to take its place, denied the National Football Stadium and no share of the Olympic plans, while billions upon billions are being spent on infrastructure in London – the government isn’t suggestion London has to borrow the money as Manchester does.
Gordon Brown’s target of 3 million homes exacerbate the huge collapse in the city centre housing market, buildings unfinished, construction companies going into liquidation (two within yards of my apartment in the city) causing massive negative equity for city centre home-owners. In some northern cities employment by the state is in excess of 50%, in some cities the sate is putting more money into them than it actually recevies back, essentially creating a socialist economy in parts of the north. The money is not being invested in infrastructure for future growth, but in job creation which has shallow roots, a fragile vail over the true requirements of northern economies. The southern economy structured in a completely different way has boomed. Dragging average public sector jobs into a city is no substitue for true economic vibrancy, failing to generate wealth in the same manor as genuine wealth creation with new companies, and small companies growing larger – Newcastle has the poorest record of this in the country.
Our skyscrapers in Manchester, current and planned, are without exception residential buildings. The strategy for our city seems purely based on the property market and so we are about to be hit very hard indeed. What other strategy exists for our city? Compared to Leeds, Manchester’s City Council has been far less successful in attracting 21st centruy economic power such financial services.
These are the challenges that need to be looked at, not migration, and not the failed policies of New Labour which have endangered a return to the widening of the North/South divide, slowing the huge change that investment in the 90’s brought to Manchester and Liverpool, and which began to show their fruit some 10 years later. Without a new direction, where will we be in 10 years time, what legacy has New labour left for our city? New Labour wants to bring us 30 years of debt (via the TIF plans) after a 10 year gap in infrastructure development, how long before Manchester starts to feel the pain of these decisions and face up to a new reality. Genuine investment, genuine growth is required, not simply playing the housing market. What benefit are loft apartments in the city to the neighbouring deprived areas close to the city centre? We all thought New Labour would have a better grip on economics – how wrong we were.
