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One of the deep driving forces behind Brexit has been a sense of alienation among many English people: being abandoned, disenfranchised, ignored, exploited.
It is the underlying discontent of a country that contains within its borders the richest capital city and nine of the ten poorest regions in northwestern Europe.
The disconnect between the “metropolitan elite” and the regions of England in particular was exploited by Brexiters in the referendum and by Boris Johnson in last year’s general election.
It is also fueling Scottish nationalism, including Welsh nationalism, and is an affluent of discord in Ulster unionism.
This deep discontent predates Brexit, of course, and the political system has responded to it since the 1990s with the devolution of powers to parliaments and assemblies in Scotland and Wales, as well as the return of a regional assembly in Ireland. from North. England has been more troublesome, with a separate national identity resurfacing, but without the political institutions to harness and direct it.
Instead, there is a mosaic of emerging political entities, led by mayors with varying degrees of power. London has been the most prominent and established city, and it proved to be Boris Johnson’s political launching pad.
But Greater Manchester is rapidly gaining traction as a potential rival municipal power base for London and London-based politicians. Its first elected mayor is Andy Burnham of the Labor Party, who traded a promising career as a cabinet minister under Gordon Brown and an opposition front-row MP with leadership aspirations, for the mayoralty of this new metropolitan authority.
But such is Manchester’s size and prominence, and such is the executive power opportunity it has, that Burnham still has leadership potential for Labor.
In fact, last week the Conservative Party began using it to turn against the current leader, Kier Starmer, saying that they were now planning the possibility that they would have to fight in the next general election against a Burnham-led Labor Party, such has been the situation. lack of incisive attacks mounted by Mr. Starmer against the government.
Okay, it’s an obvious political mockery, but it’s an indication that Burnham is still a great beast in Britain’s political jungle.
So we need to pay attention to the fact that Andy Burnham and his Liverpool Mayor’s counterpart Steve Rotheram participated in an Enterprise Ireland webinar on Thursday.
Of course, it was designed to boost post-Brexit trade between Ireland and the UK, with a special emphasis on exports to the North West of England.
Enterprise Ireland has established an office in Manchester, and will soon be joined by a Consulate General, alongside those in Edinburgh and Cardiff and overseen by the Embassy in London.
But what caught my attention the most were the comments from the two mayors about how they want to use their new delegated powers to do their own economic and social development, and not wait for London.
For starters, the two mayors are working together to boost trade, and their first joint trade mission will be to Ireland in September.
Naturally, they will be exaggerating the things we know about Liverpool and Manchester – music and football – and hope to have representatives from “our four great football clubs” on the mission, according to Andy Burnham.
To which one can only retort that never before in the history of pushing an open door, the doors of Ireland will so easily open to a stardust-spattered trade mission from Manchester United, Liverpool FC, Everton and Manchester City.
In the new business of regional trade missions, you’ll find it uphill after Ireland in September.
But Andy Burnham was very clear in his contribution on the importance of England’s new regional policy: “If Britain is going to be successful as a result of Brexit, it will depend on city regions like ours exercising their weight internationally. I think we are marking down our weight now because we live in a country centered in London.
“There is a desire from our residents for more power in the English regions, to do more for ourselves and to achieve more on the world stage.”
It is also clear that linking with Liverpool will give more presence to the entire Northwest region.
And he is clear that commerce is not a one-way street: “We want to promote our own businesses, but if we go protectionist we are doomed. People want the best of the British, the best of the Irish and the best of the Europeans. And that’s what we’re showing by going to Ireland so early. “
Is this the highly acclaimed (albeit less watched) “Northern Powerhouse”? Liverpool Metropolitan Mayor Steve Rotheram says the phrase was “an artificial construction of (former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer) George Osborne to try to respond to the problems we face.
“We are the most politically centralized democracy in the OECD, but we have the most unbalanced economy in all of Europe. The devolution is a start to address the inequalities and other economic problems that we have in our country,” he said.
So what’s the selling point to Ireland from the North West? According to Burnham and Rotheram, there are opportunities in the post-Covid recovery around the green economy and digitization.
And they intend to leverage the UK government’s organization of the next major UN climate change conference, COP 26, in Glasgow later this year to polish their own green business credentials. In particular, with tidal power and carbon capture and storage projects in the Irish Sea.
“I think we are going to see an ecological recovery from the pandemic,” says Burnham.
“In 100 years, people will look back at 2020 and see it as a moment of real acceleration towards zero carbon. Governments around the world need to get serious about job creation, and this is the obvious place to start.
“We have to modernize all the properties in Greater Manchester, home to five million people, and there are opportunities for thousands of good quality jobs. I grew up in the 1980s and politicians of my generation have never been in a position to tell young people in the Northwest who if trained in a particular skill set will have a good quality job for life – this gives us the opportunity to say that.
“So it is obvious to me that we will see a huge acceleration in the green economy.”
He believes that the large presence of Irish construction companies in Manchester at the moment leaves the Irish well positioned to benefit from this move towards green energy, insulation and transportation.
Steve Rotheram points out that regional authorities are making their own investments in projects such as the housing stock.
He says that about a third of the energy loss and carbon emissions in his city come from Victorian-era homes. Fixing it also addresses energy poverty – the poorest people have to spend more on heating.
He also says that “the transportation infrastructure is huge for us, we are trying to get east-west connectivity as well as north-south.”
Liverpool is investing in a fleet of hydrogen-powered buses. “This means that hydrogen energy becomes important for us, incentivizing energy providers, working with universities, generating partnership possibilities.”
Autonomous regional trade policy may be new to England, but the rules of trade are not. One of them, the “theory of gravity,” according to which you trade more with countries closest to you, may reassert itself after years of Brexit-driven denial here.
As Mayor Rotheram put it, “Manchester is an hour from Liverpool, but it is only 25 minutes from John Lennon Airport to Dublin Airport – we have to tear down these water barriers and forge stronger links.”
Enterprise Ireland’s approach to the North West region may provide insight into official post-Brexit UK thinking.
Despite Brexit, and despite Covid, Irish businesses still see Britain as a growth market, according to a survey of client companies conducted by the agency. 89% of respondents saw growth opportunities in Britain and 80% are planning to expand.
The survey results kick off a new phase of activity by the agency to target UK growth, having spent much of the last two decades trying to persuade Irish companies to look beyond their traditional expansion market. Expect the north of England and Scotland to feature prominently.
Two strands are therefore coming together: a reset by Irish business and business bodies to try to make the most of the post-Brexit situation – and a new determination by UK regional authorities, assemblies and parliaments to do yours. London, not Brussels.
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