Who had Farage and Patel dancing to Frankie Valli in the sweepstake?
'Can't take my eyes off you' is right...like a car crash
I’d almost forgotten Nigel Farage existed, he’d sort of sunk down in my consciousness since all that Coutts business and I was blissfully considering him an irrelevance.
Naturally, because I’d let my guard down, he’s been at the Tory Conference, and was filmed dancing and enthusiastically going “BA-DA! BA-DA! BA-DA-DA-DA!” to Frankie Valli with former Home Secretary Priti Patel.
I predicted Coffey and Gove doing The Smiths, but a GB News hosted party gave us a different duo.
‘I fear to watch, yet I cannot turn away’ is an appropriate line for both the Farage-Patel video and the conference as a whole.
There have not been a lot of policy announcements so far:
Transport Secretary Mark Harper gave an airing to some conspiracy theories about 15-minute cities (who would want stuff conveniently located near where you live, eh?)
Steve Barclay’s big announcement was a consultation on banning trans-women from female wards (I’m not sure that’s the biggest problem the NHS is facing, but okay…)
Continuing the theme of being overly concerned with what’s in other people’s trousers, Michelle Donelan announced a review into the ‘slow creep of wokeism’ into science, mentioning gender and sex questions in research
Suella Braverman said some deliberately inflammatory stuff about migration in an effort to position herself as a potential next party leader…then she positioned her foot onto a Guide Dog’s tail. At least it wasn't a Dalmatian.
Rishi Sunak, for his part, has spent the last few days talking almost exclusively about HS2, without actually saying anything.
Andy Burnham - not pictured above - has been slowly turning up the volume, as has Tory mayor of the West Midlands Andy Street.
We await the formal announcement in the PM’s speech today, but the Manchester leg of HS2 seems as good as dead - the leaked suggestion is he’ll scrap Birmingham to Manchester, but keep Euston as the terminus, and reinvest the savings - £36bn - in regional transport across the Midlands and the North.
A classic example of saying two bad things so that when you only do one of them it only looks like you’re, I guess… half bad…? I don’t think that works when the good half is in London and you’re in Manchester though.
Anyway, I won’t rehash all this again, but you know how I feel.
How can we unleash the potential of cities?
The UK Urban Futures Commission, a partnership between the RSA, Core Cities UK, Lloyds, PwC and Inner Circle Consulting, has published a report on how we can encourage the UK’s cities to thrive.
Much of what the report suggests is around how cities are financed, and whether they can harness investment and wealth to create prosperity.
The productivity puzzle comes up again - as per this chart. Newcastle in amongst the UK cities below the trend line.
The recommendations include reinstating a national industrial strategy, a more streamlined, long term funding model for local authorities, changes to local borrowing for regeneration projects and enhanced fiscal devolution.
There are 163,000 workless households in the North East
Latest data, out last week, found there were 163,000 workless households in the region, with 38% of those the result of sickness or disability (the average for England is 33.7%).
Across England, 13.4% of households are out of work and in the North East that figure is 19.7%.
Also worthy of note is the lower percentage of households workless due to studying - 9.6% compared to 11.7% across England as a whole.
What I’ve been reading this week
Self-promotion time - it was a pleasure to work on this collaboration between Pattern and the InnovationSupernetwork. I spoke to their Challenge Programme lead Sarah Cox about her life and work, and why she’s so passionate about innovation. She knows her stuff, so it’s worth a read if you’re interested in the innovation ecosystem in the North East…and how it’s helping tackle big challenges like an ageing population and the transition to net zero
A piece in The Times, an interview with Peter Kyle MP about losing his husband ten years ago - it’s paywalled, but there’s some of it in this tweet.
What’s coming up in the next week or so?
Sunak’s conference speech later on - going to have to be a corker to rescue what's been a pretty fractured conference
There’s a by-election in Scotland tomorrow, a test of post-Sturgeon SNP popularity
Labour’s Conference is in Liverpool, starting on Sunday
Local authority level stats on unemployment etc, out tomorrow
Data on inequalities in A&E attendance, out on Friday
Regional data on consumer card spending from 2019-2023, also out on Friday
Working with me
I’m fully booked for October, but welcoming chats about projects for the rest of the year.
You can find out more about me on my website.
You can email me on worroom@substack.com or arlen@arlenpettitt.co.uk
I’m @arlenpettitt on Twitter, and you’ll find me on LinkedIn.