This piece was originally published in the Manchester Evening News
I’ve stayed quiet on Jeremy Corbyn until now, mainly for a quiet life. But all good things must come to an end. Mr Corbyn will pack out a Manchester hall tomorrow night with hundreds of left-wingers looking for a radical alternative.
Radical. Strange word. I have not seen one Jez policy that doesn’t date back at least 30 years.
Renationalise the railways? 1980s. Putting women in their own train carriages? That ended in the 1970s. Printing money? 1920s Germany. And if you don’t know what happened there, look it up.
But probably his least radical instinct is embodied in his approach to the north. His "Northern Future" plan (a name nicked from the Liberal Democrats—so even that isn’t new) is a startling backwards step.
Take this sentence.
“Devolving powers for their own sake is tokenism, and will not create jobs, raise wages, or build new homes.”
His senior Labour colleagues in Greater Manchester and across the north might take issue with the idea that handing them power amounts to tokenism.
Let's take jobs. Just months after devolved transport spending was agreed, the tram line to Trafford Park is already in its final stages of planning. After years of begging government for the cash to build the line, it will now create jobs and carry people to them.
Raise wages?
Skills powers are aimed precisely at getting people into better-paid jobs that will, definitely, exist—by matching college courses with expanding employers. Shouting about the living wage is fine. But ultimately you also need a well-trained workforce to match your economy.
And homes? We've already been given £300m for housebuilding. Moves to get more powers are currently being discussed.
The document opens with a tirade against centralisation.
Yet every answer in his northern manifesto refers to a "national" bank or a "national" graduate clearing centre or a "national" housing consortium. Or renationalisation.
Spot the devolution. Spot the progressive northern policy. Because I can’t.
Yes, Devo Manc is—and will be—a bumpy ride. It is a work in progress and there are a great many problems, not least with transparency. Problems I have documented in the Manchester Evening News.
And Corbyn's point that the Tories have taken a scythe to northern council budgets while simultaneously claiming to champion the north is not wrong.
But we are where we are. The Conservatives are in power. Would he, were he to gain power in five years' time, really roll back the decade of self-determination his Labour colleagues in Greater Manchester will have achieved by then?
It sounds like it.
So who, really, when it comes to the north, is more radical: Jeremy Corbyn, who wants to reopen the mines and return to heavy manufacturing when our growth is in health, technology and creative industries?
Or George Osborne?
However little he cares about homelessness or housing waiting lists, Osborne's policy really is radical: Let us, finally, sort it out for ourselves.
I’ve stayed quiet on Jeremy Corbyn until now, mainly for a quiet life. But all good things must come to an end. Mr Corbyn will pack out a Manchester hall tomorrow night with hundreds of left-wingers looking for a radical alternative.
Radical. Strange word. I have not seen one Jez policy that doesn’t date back at least 30 years.
Renationalise the railways? 1980s. Putting women in their own train carriages? That ended in the 1970s. Printing money? 1920s Germany. And if you don’t know what happened there, look it up.
But probably his least radical instinct is embodied in his approach to the north. His "Northern Future" plan (a name nicked from the Liberal Democrats—so even that isn’t new) is a startling backwards step.
Take this sentence.
“Devolving powers for their own sake is tokenism, and will not create jobs, raise wages, or build new homes.”
His senior Labour colleagues in Greater Manchester and across the north might take issue with the idea that handing them power amounts to tokenism.
Let's take jobs. Just months after devolved transport spending was agreed, the tram line to Trafford Park is already in its final stages of planning. After years of begging government for the cash to build the line, it will now create jobs and carry people to them.
Raise wages?
Skills powers are aimed precisely at getting people into better-paid jobs that will, definitely, exist—by matching college courses with expanding employers. Shouting about the living wage is fine. But ultimately you also need a well-trained workforce to match your economy.
And homes? We've already been given £300m for housebuilding. Moves to get more powers are currently being discussed.
The document opens with a tirade against centralisation.
Yet every answer in his northern manifesto refers to a "national" bank or a "national" graduate clearing centre or a "national" housing consortium. Or renationalisation.
Spot the devolution. Spot the progressive northern policy. Because I can’t.
Yes, Devo Manc is—and will be—a bumpy ride. It is a work in progress and there are a great many problems, not least with transparency. Problems I have documented in the Manchester Evening News.
And Corbyn's point that the Tories have taken a scythe to northern council budgets while simultaneously claiming to champion the north is not wrong.
But we are where we are. The Conservatives are in power. Would he, were he to gain power in five years' time, really roll back the decade of self-determination his Labour colleagues in Greater Manchester will have achieved by then?
It sounds like it.
So who, really, when it comes to the north, is more radical: Jeremy Corbyn, who wants to reopen the mines and return to heavy manufacturing when our growth is in health, technology and creative industries?
Or George Osborne?
However little he cares about homelessness or housing waiting lists, Osborne's policy really is radical: Let us, finally, sort it out for ourselves.
