Convention of the North - a genuine lobbying opportunity?

“The best way to predict the future is to create it,” sage words of Abraham Lincoln.

And wise words indeed, so much so they were half inched by one of the many speakers at last week’s Convention of the North, the implication clearly we need to become masters of our own destiny.

This year’s circus... I mean convention, was the turn of Manchester to host, having deferred to Liverpool and Newcastle and Rotherham in years gone by, not to mention a global pandemic.

The aim of the event, as ever, to shine a light on the ‘levelling up’ agenda. What do we require ‘up north’ to get the economy firing on all cylinders, to build a head of steam and then shoot for stars, and if we miss, hit the moon anyway!

Starting to sound all a bit too familiar, though now. How about Government just shows us the money, devolves the power where required, and lets us get on with it, right? It’s pretty much what COTN delegates were told throughout the day was needed, although the message hasn't really changed over the years and we are where we are still.

So the shopping list would look like this: devolved spending on education, allowing the North to create the right skills for the regional economies. Manchester needs digital skills, the north east needs green skills, I forget what Liverpool needed, but you get the point.

We also need more/better/faster/reliable east-west rail connectivity, without which we may as well shut up shop and go home. And not just rail capacity for commuters. At a break-out session on transport I attended, one of the panel revealed this gem of a stat: 35% of all imports in to the UK come through northern ports. Only 10% of that figure actually make the final leg of the journey via rail – meaning local roads and motorway networks are consumed by the huge number of HGV journeys required to disseminate the goods onwards. That’s a staggering amount of clogging haulage traffic for the likes of the M6 and the M62, and it’s largely because east-west container rail delivery is non-existent, lacking both the capacity and technical requirements needed for mass container shipment movement. Scandalous!

There was an interesting guest appearance from Carsten Schneider, a German’s Parliamentary State Secretary for East Germany and Equivalent Living Conditions in the Scholz cabinet. Fascinating parallels between wealthy West Germany (our South) and the impoverished East Germany (our North) and just how they went about their equivalent of levelling up after reunification. This was achieved by enshrining in law that the east should be treated as equals in terms of funding to the West, so everyone got a same size slice of the cake.

This might be the only way we in the North of England can get a fair deal as we move forward, otherwise we may keep getting the ‘mucky’ end of the stick, whether it’s on HS2 overground v underground stations, watered down east-west rail plans, or something else. Interesting to see whether such a commitment would make any future Labour manifesto?

One of the other underlying messages of the convention was that inequality is bad for everyone, including the south, and no one can really dispute with that sentiment. People should be proud of where they live, we were told, and shouldn’t feel the need to move to London to do well. Good jobs, good homes and good public transport should be reality, not aspirational. Like in London.

Talking of London, perhaps the biggest name on the day people had assembled to hear from was Michael Gove, the Minister for Levelling Up no less. I don’t deny the man’s passion for his portfolio, and even Andy Burnham said he was one of the ‘good guys’ (OK I’m paraphrasing), but from his speech you’d think we were half way there.

I got the impression the audience and the media were waiting for a big announcement, which never came. Some more devolution deals in the North East but nothing earth shattering. Mutterings of discontent we audible at the end of his speech – cut short by host Evan Davis – before the Minister left after a whistle stop 30 minute visit.

The idea of the COTN event is for the North to come together ‘as one’ to lobby key decision makers in Government.

If the Government’s top levelling up man can’t be bothered to hang around to listen, are we truly being involved in the process? ?

If the best way to predict the future truly is to create it ourselves, as Abe Lincoln quotes, is this annual meet-up really the best way?