The Northern Agenda: Eight years and still no powerhouse

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By ROB PARSONS - June 23 2022

It was on June 23, 2014, that then-Chancellor George Osborne stood in Manchester’s Museum of Science and Industry and gave a speech with the headline 'we need a Northern Powerhouse '.

At the centre of his vision was a high speed rail link connecting Leeds and Manchester, new powerful metro mayors for the North and a greater backing for Northern innovation and culture to help the region grow after decades of economic decline.

So eight years on from the speech, which went on to define much of the political debate about the North, has the Government succeeded in meeting his main aims? A diplomatic assessment would be that so far results have been mixed.

As academic Ryan Swift of the IPPR North think-tank points out , the phrase Northern Powerhouse has been replaced by 'levelling up' but so far little progress has been made on the latter agenda. He writes that for "those across the North and regions like it, it is essential that the government delivers on its pledges."

On transport, he writes that the Northern Powerhouse Rail scheme has been scaled back, the Eastern leg of HS2 axed and Transport for the North's funding cut. He adds: "The government made promises to the region and broke them."

Three out of five people in the North are now represented by a metro mayor but many of the benefits of devolution have been undermined by austerity, which brought about £3.6bn cuts in public spending in the North between 2009 and 2018.

The recent