The Northern Powerhouse is a smoke-and-mirrors sales pitch to sell the North and it's assets. The North needs something real.

Photograph: Northern Rail train at Manchester Oxford Road by Mikey. (License) (Cropped)

The chaos caused by the mess Northern Rail has made of it's timetables, has led to commentators calling into question how committed the government really is to the vaunted Northern Powerhouse - it's plan to rejuvenate the North.

Perhaps this mess would have been containable for the government, if it wasn't for the fact that the collapse of the rail network in the North comes not in isolation, but on the back of big promises that been ever further downgraded until they have been all but scrapped.

Tory ministers had pledged major upgrades and major new links. But the big pledges were watered down. Last summer, the transport minister announced that Electrification for the North were cancelled, even as he confirmed more investment in London.

And the ambitions of the TransPennine railway upgrades have been severely contracted - originally pitched as work from Liverpool to Newcastle, the latest focus is just on speeding up links between Bradford, Leeds and Manchester.

Even in the face of the current crisis, the Transport Secretary has been reluctant to talk punitively of how the rail services are being run - even as they are effectively curtailed, cut down to something approximate to an emergency schedule.

It isn't hard to see why the Northern Powerhouse now looks to have been all smoke and mirrors.

Part of the problem is that it was. In essence, the government plan for devolution was constructed around a branding exercise - the "Northern Powerhouse", the "Midland's Engine" - the semantics of which give away the broader aim of gearing the regions towards serving the corporate interests of UK PLC.

In practice, devolution reflected Conservative interests. It cut money from local services, only to return it, in part, through the Metro Mayors - executive figures, alienated from local government and accountability - whose role seems mostly intended to spend the funds on easing the way for business.

The focus was on building a framework, an infrastructure, that will encourage inward investment into a transport hub that would have most Northerners at most an hour away from most major Northern cities and their employment opportunities.

But the plan has also effectively cut local people out of the loop - developing plans for them, to impose on them. And the focus is still on the cities, and not post-industrial towns, where people have been left feeling abandoned.

Recently speaking at a Manchester Business School event on the Northern Powerhouse, Vince Cable delved into how the Powerhouse plans that he and George Osborne developed unfolded.

Cable said that the Northern Powerhouse was supposed to achieve two things: balance out the lure of London and address previous failures to get people and jobs in the same place - which he referred to as the "work to the workers, or workers to the work" dilemma. Transport would be key to Powerhouse's "workers to the work" approach.

Cable argued that efforts were however undermined by budget cuts - the Liberal Democrat said that he protested cuts to capital spending, and that the local government minister failed to protect local government budgets.

The result was a collection of cities, still poorly connected, that have become more vibrant and dynamic, but are still surrounded by impoverished suburbs - already stripped of opportunities, now cut off and drowning amid cuts.

In these conditions, of course, any investment for the North is welcome. And needed. But is tailoring the whole region purely for business the right way to go about it?

The Conservatives have sought to rebrand the North and prepare it's assets - including Northerners themselves, presented as a pool of workers and customers within easy reach and ready to scramble - for sale. Regional devolution becomes a sales pitch, all show and no substance.

But where are Northerners themselves fitting into this? People in the North are struggling to make ordinary journey's to work, that they really can't afford to lose. With competition for jobs so overwhelming, expensive journeys and cancellations are a direct threat to the ability of the lowest earners to get by.

There's only so much that an influx of business investors and new jobs could fix - even job security would unlikely be improved if the amount of work available better matched the demand for employment, such is the direction working conditions are headed in.

The North need more that is rooted there. Affordable housing. Affordable and reliable public transport. Career opportunities for the least well off, and least skilled, with the longevity and security around which to build a life.

Was any of this ever on the cards with the Northern Powerhouse?

The North needs public investment in public infrastructure and work deeply rooted in it's own communities - the means to make use of it's own resources. Achieving that from the outside, from distant Westminster, would be hard.

But from well organised and funded local government, taking seriously civic engagement, giving people a real voice and involvement? In that there is hope.

References

Jennifer Williams' 'This is what the Tories’ ‘northern powerhouse’ really looks like: a mess | The transport system around many northern cities is in meltdown. George Osborne’s bold promises in 2014 were a joke'; in The Guardian; 1 June 2018.

Daniel Hewitt's 'The "Northern Powerhouse" means nothing when you can't even get to work'; on ITV News; 1 June 2018.

Helen Pidd's 'Day of moaning declared in north of England over train woes: Commuters urged to flood TV and radio phone-ins after transport secretary’s cancellation of rail electrification upgrades in the north'; in The Guardian; 21 August 2017.

Rob Merrick's 'Labour warns 'Northern Powerhouse' will be dead if Pennine rail electrification is cancelled: It will be impossible to slash journey times between cities – the central aim of the Northern Powerhouse promise – without electrification, party says'; in The Independent; 2 August 2017.

Helen Pidd's 'Four cities, 1 hour, 1.3m people: new northern rail plan revealed: Northern Powerhouse Rail – a fast line between Bradford, Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool – could create 850,000 jobs, says transport body'; in The Guardian; 16 January 2018.