This will be a familiar story to many around the UK, but here goes anyway.
Ambitious, and dare I say it, possibly sensible plans for a Yorkshire-wide devolution deal (eight cities and a population almost the same as Scotland’s) really never went anywhere because of petty rivalries between cities and ridings. [You only need to peruse the Yorkshire Post newspaper to realise that the East Riding is never given the same attention as the North, West and, for true Yorkshire folk anomalous, South Ridings. Perhaps we need more cultural enrichment to be taken seriously?]
For obvious reasons Humberside (1974-1996) as an artificial county was always doomed to failure, although we’re still stuck with some remaining hangovers nearly three decades later (e.g. our postal addresses and Police Force). Reinventing Humberside V2 would be just too hard a sell, but the politicos of Kingston upon Hull and the East Riding just had to get in on the devolution band wagon somehow.
For those who don’t know, Hull is a small semi-circular city on the banks of the Humber Estuary (part of the English coast) but otherwise an enclave completely surrounded by the overwhelmingly rural East Riding. Why the leaders of both entities couldn’t just talk to each other and cooperate remains a mystery, but both enthusiastically embraced a new Hull and East Yorkshire Combined Authority with an elected Mayor (first Mayoral election on 1st May). Our democratic leaders freely admitted there would be no referendum on whether the plebs actually wanted this, and went as far as to state referenda were dangerous because people had wrongly voted for Brexit and so just couldn’t be trusted.
We’re now getting the usual information booklet by post plus the lacklustre electioneering leaflets from the six uninspiring mayoral candidates N.B. only two received so far. Clearly there’s something afoot when both the leaders of Hull City Council and the East Riding have themselves decided to stand. Hopes of a charismatic non-political independent candidate immediately fell by the wayside, so we’re stuck with only LibDem, Labour, Conservative, Reform, Green and Yorkshire Party candidates.
LibDem, Labour and Conservative candidates are well known local politicos and the others political unknowns (although as already covered by TNC, the Reform candidate is a local former Olympic boxing personality).
It’s telling that the manifestos of all read more like 6th Form debating society topics, probably because if you imagine the area to resemble an egg (Hull being the yolk and East Yorkshire the white) they are already part and parcel of the same thing and intimately interdependent. The only ‘advantage’ therefore is the paltry £400M (but over thirty years) government bonus aka bribe devolution-lite brings, and the inevitable opportunity to grow a whole new level of unnecessary expensive bureaucracy.
Election promises: naturally there is the spoken or unspoken inevitable focus on achieving net zero and combatting the terrors of the climate emergency. The LibDems admit up front that the prospect of a youngish former boxer winning is, when allied with the pure evil that is Reform, a prospect as frightening as the absolutely definitely impending climate Armageddon. Labour are touting free summer transport to the coast for all. The Conservatives opt for an unconvincing hard-sell of the many virtues of their candidate. The Yorkshire Party want to reinstate the 1965 closed Beverley to York rail line (now partly built over), but this vanity project has always been akin to The Simpsons Monorail episode. The Greens also talk, surprisingly, about transport improvements but don’t come clean about their irrational fear of petrol or determination to force everyone back into a pre-industrial existence. It’s all predictable lightweight stuff, and of course absolutely guaranteed to lift our backwater into a new vibrant Yorkshire-style Singapore. At the same time surely equally strange, and possibly ominous, is that no candidate has anything whatsoever to say about Hull being one of the UK’s major maritime ports still with potential to massively expand.
This voter will be spoiling his paper. Having looked at the betting odds (but not really believing them as the bookies won’t accept bets), nevertheless I look vicariously forward to a, as predicted by some, Reform landslide victory and the nose out of joint LibLabCons then refusing to even meet with Mayor Campbell lest they be infected with racism or given a hard pasting by someone who’s not part of their cozy club. Sadly, I don’t feel confident that skills in the boxing ring are transferrable to the even more vicious arena of politics. It’s a pity that local lass Dewbs (Michelle Dewberry) didn’t feel moved to stand, given her previously standing as a independent Hull MP candidate, but perhaps she’s canny enough to read the room and to recognise a pig in a poke when she sees it.
Martin Rispin has had a career in many different sectors, most lately in the fields of English Tourism and Heritage based Urban Regeneration. He now lives, retired, in Kingston upon Hull.
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It’s a mystery why clearly incomplete mini-devolution deals are so heavily pushed onto a sceptical public. Might it be because now with no EU opportunities for the political grifter class, this is another way of ensuring some never need to experience the real world of work and also to enforce the status quo and power of ‘respectable’ political parties (also a new way of passing the buck)?
Untapped Port of Hull import/export/transport potential
Increasing food production
Coastal erosion/flood prevention measures
National/International Tourism promotion
Housing for outpriced indigenous locals
Real cutting waste/pollution environmentalism
It takes a member of the voting public to devise a moderately sensible manifesto, way beyond any of the parties or their candidates, hence ‘all unsuitable’ voting paper spoiling.