Recently in Manchester Category

I attended a hugely enjoyable event held by Westminster Briefing in respect of the Portas Report yesterday morning.  Yet again I wasn't very clear why I'd been invited to speak (sometimes I think I'm just the court jester) but I felt it was probably safe to do so, given that I was following David Morris of CLG, who actually knows something about the Portas Report; and that I was to be followed by Michael Weedon, of the British Independent Retailers Association, who actually knows something about independent retailers. 

This simply allowed me to be, as the press office of Tower Hamlets would have it  "sweeping and opinionated" and "bilious" in respect of the future of our town centres and high streets.  

So.... Manchester, Nottingham, Coventry and Bradford have rejected the proposal for a directly elected mayor. 

I am mildly surprised actually.  But I guess there was always a philosophical disconnect between a centrist London cognoscenti push to get regional cities to adopt elected mayors and the ethos of localism and the general power of competence.  You do have to ask why successive governments get it so wrong with trying to persuade the nation that regional government is the way forward.  Nobody seemed to learn much from the ill fated attempt by John Prescott trying to convince very sceptical, and very opposed, regions to vote for a regional government structure back in the day.  That was a complete waste of time, but we didn't read the runes.  The mayoral referenda were touted as a key part of localism and improving democratic accountability but, contrary to everything which the Government promoted, the public seem to have perceived it as absolutely the opposite.

Regular readers of this blog will recall the good-natured exchange I had with Howard Bernstein at MIPIM over the Enterprise Zones (10 March 2011). I still intend to furnish Sir Howard with his (highly alliterative) "empirical evidence of the efficacy of Enterprise Zones", but Dr Evans is on holiday right now (as a cheeky person quipped earlier today: "The President's Brian is Missing.") so I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'll keep you posted.

But Sir Howard certainly continues to excite strong emotions. On Tuesday, Manchester Evening News carried an hilarious interview with Barbara Spicer, chief executive of Salford city council, where she explains how she has become incredibly close to her Manchester city council counterpart (Sir Howard Bernstein, of course), and describes their relationship as "almost like that of a mother and daughter". As she says (with apparently genuine affection): "It's a little like you'd say, 'Mum, what do you think about this?'."

The article is headed "Howard Bernstein is like my mum", which is a bit of a shame really, as the piece is, in all other respects, exemplary. Well, the mind boggles! Ms Spicer gets us into this unfortunate mire of maternalism (which I bet she is truly regretting now) in her attempt to explain that there wasn't a natural partnership with Manchester when she took the Salford job over four years ago. She says: "I'm not saying that the politicians weren't talking, but in organisational terms, there wasn't any real partnership. And to be honest, I think there was some kind of competition. Very early on, I made it clear that any competition with Manchester was over. In terms of developing the core of the conurbation, we take a very singular view and that is one of the things that we will look at in the round: we discuss which sites we are going to bring forward."