It strikes me as amazing that all three political party conferences are being held in our big cities; the Liberal Democrats in Liverpool, the Labour Party in Manchester and the Tories in Birmingham. This would have been inconceivable only a few years ago when party conferences were typically held in towns like Bournemouth, Blackpool and Harrogate with many people looking down their noses at the major cities considering them too dirty and congested, or without sufficient facilities.
The feedback I get is that delegates enjoy coming to the big city venues, are proud of the transformation they can see in these cities and are impressed with the welcome offered. The challenge now is to keep the momentum of transformation in our cities. Our progress has taken a long time and lots of resources having been initiated by Lord Heseltine, accelerated by Lord Rogers’ taskforce and driven through by Lord Prescott.
The continual regeneration of our cities appears low on the priorities of all three parties and there’s a real danger of the progress we have seen stopping, or event going into reverse.
To see what the general opinion was I took the ‘Cab test’ and asked a driver what he thought of Labour being in Manchester. “Great for business,” he said, “but the Tories are even better. Not because of their politics but they walk less and cab it more!”
I agree Tom that it’s a thoroughly positive trend. Not only does it give us champions of regional cities a chance to introduce decision makers a real taste of a different city from the capital, the media figures also get a chance to have their preconceptions challenged, often with positIve results in the press.
We must guard against tokenism, though, and continue to press the case for the northern cities in the seeming vacuum - as you say - of a coherent policy to support the core cities through the inevitable hard times ahead.