North East mayor urges for message of hope from Government

The Government has been mired in a series of controversies this week – including rows over senior figures accepting free gifts of clothes, Sir Keir Starmer accepting corporate hospitality for Arsenal games, and the salary of the Prime Minister’s chief of staff.

Polls have also shown a sharp dip in the public’s opinion of Sir Keir and Chancellor Rachel Reeves since July’s election, as Labour has been criticised for withdrawing winter fuel payment for millions of pensioners.

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Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service in Liverpool on Sunday (September 22) as the Labour conference begins, North East mayor Kim McGuinness admitted it had been “a difficult week and there is nothing we can say that would change that” – but labelled some of the rows “proper Westminster bubble stuff”.

Ms McGuinness, who was elected in May this year two months before the general election, said party leaders now had to “present hope and optimism for the future and deliver the change that people voted for”.

She added: “I think what we have to remember is that it has been less than 11 weeks since we have had this Labour Government and they have lifted the lid off the public finances and found a £22 billion black hole left by the Tories – that is inevitably going to be incredibly difficult to overcome. Rachel Reeves has been honest about difficult decisions, but with those difficult decisions needs to come a picture of a brighter future and that is what I hope to see this week.

“For some of the rest of what we have seen in the media, I don’t discredit how difficult that is for people to hear and we cannot detract from that. But a lot of these stories, particularly when we get into the pay of a senior member of staff in Downing Street, are proper Westminster bubble stuff.

“We have a country to improve and devolution is really high on the agenda. We are the furthest English region away from Westminster and what we want to see is delivery, that is what is important to the people of this country. What I want is for us to move away from these distractionary stories and start to talk about the substance – the houses that need to be built, the jobs that need to be created, the kids that need to be lifted out of poverty, the transport networks that need to be improved. That is ultimately what will make this country better and give us the change we so desperately need.”

Labour’s deputy leader has pledged a “devolution revolution” under the new Government to end the days of “northerners being dictated to by Whitehall”.

In her opening speech to the conference delegation on Merseyside, Ms Rayner promised to bolster workers’ rights and build more social housing.

Speaking at a fringe event alongside Liverpool Council leader Liam Robinson on Sunday, Ms McGuinness said that Labour would end the “Hunger Games” bidding contests for Government funding that “pitted region against region, city against city, council against council”.

The Conservatives came under fire for making local councils compete for money from pots like its flagship Levelling Up Fund, for which Durham County Council spent more than £1 million putting together bids that failed.

Ms McGuinness added that plans were in the works for regional mayors to be handed longer-term funding settlements which they would have greater control over how to spend.

Calling for a renewed push for economic growth in towns and cities across the North of England, the former Northumbria Police and Crime Commissioner said: “Other than in hotspots like London and the West Midlands, and Manchester to a degree, everywhere else isn’t growing. Our cities are experiencing sustained stagnation or recession.

“We are one of the most centralised countries in the world – the model doesn’t work.

“If you look at Germany, pretty much every single one of its regions is growing and firing on all cylinders, proving that devolution really works.”