The Northern Agenda

In the run-up to the General Election, we've heard so much from the likes of Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak, Nigel Farage and Ed Davey - wouldn't it be interesting to put the local candidates bidding for voters in the North in the spotlight for a change? This week on the Northern Agenda podcast, election rivals in the North East are taken to task over how they would combat soaring child poverty rate...

We're 40 years on from the so-called Battle of Orgreave, when thousands of picketing miners were attacked by riot police in South Yorkshire in what has been described as one of the most violent clashes in British industrial history, with police using ‘paramilitary’ tactics. And to mark the occasion a new report, chronicling what campaigners say is decades of multi-agency cover up of state-orchestr...

​W​e're three weeks into the General Election campaign and Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives are staring down the barrel of an historic defeat that will see them reduced to just a handful of seats in the North of England and potentially scrapping with the Lib Dems and Reform UK to be the opposition to the next Labour government. It's been a torrid week for ​t​he Prime Minister - who's been hammere...

For the next few weeks there's really only one story in town politics-wise and that's the 2024 General Election - the one that seems to have been on the horizon for months but in the end came quite unexpectedly with an announcement by Rishi Sunak in a rain-drenched Downing Street. Since then it's been a non-stop flurry of campaign stops, photo opportunities, social media blitzes and behind-closed-...

Ahead of the General Election on July 4th, we’re taking a look at one of the key policies from the 2019 Conservative manifesto.  Levelling up promised to boost Britain’s “left behind” areas, and helped Boris Johnson storm to victory as voters in former Labour heartlands turned to the Tories in droves.  You can find out more by listening to our episode from April 2022, titled “Levelling up: what it...

This week Rob Parsons joins 13,000 (mostly blue suit-wearing) delegates from the business and political worlds at a major property conference in Leeds - the UK's Real Estate Investment and Infrastructure Forum. ​The likes of Angela Rayner and Alastair Campbell were among the speakers at the three-day event at Leeds' Royal Armouries - which saw hectic networking amid the torrential downpours as loc...

Most of us spend our days with a mobile phone practically glued to our hand - in fact you may well be listening to this podcast on it right now. And it's becoming more and more common for children to have a smart phone, some even before they start at secondary school. But there are more and more people who are terrified at what the ubiquity of smart phones and social media is doing to our children...

We're a week on from the local and mayoral elections and the dust is still settling on a set of results which dealt another major blow to Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives. And it was the election of metro mayors - the political figureheads for big regions like the North East, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire - which made most of the headlines. But while most Westminster pundits - and Rishi S...

Rob Parsons reports from a​ sports hall in the town of Thornaby-on-Tees - where he's witnessed perhaps the only bright spot for Rishi Sunak in what ​w​as a miserable local and mayoral election night for his Conservative Party. ​T​he Tories ​look to be on course to lose 500 local election seats in what could be their worst showing in 40 years.​ They were thrashed in the Blackpool South by-election...

This week Rob Parsons focuses on the parts of the country where millions of us live - the so-called coalfield or ex-mining communities - and find out what the future holds for them. There's a new report out this week from the Coalfields Regeneration Trust setting out how the areas whose miners used to power industrial Britain are still lagging behind the big cities when it comes to jobs. But cruci...

Which political story should we be paying more attention to: the saga of Angela Rayner's council house in Stockport or that of Lancashire MP Mark Menzies, who is accused of using political donations to cover medical expenses and pay off “bad people” who had locked him in a flat and demanded thousands of pounds for his release? This week Rob Parsons compares the merits of these two stories with the...

This week​,​ Rob Parsons speaks to an author who's asked the question: How did the North become a place of lost potential and broken dreams? And what can be done to make it one of the most dynamic and forward-looking places in the world once again? Alex Niven is the man behind the book The North Will Rise Again, which covers the colourful adventures of its inhabitants, the expansiveness and optimi...

This week the Northern Agenda podcast comes from the headquarters of the North East's Chronicle and Journal newspapers in the centre of Newcastle for a special mayoral hustings edition. In a month's time one of the five people speaking to Rob Parsons over the conference room table will be the new elected mayor of the North East. They'll have powers and funding - some £4.2bn over 30 years - to impa...

In the next few months as the impending General Election dominates our politics, The Northern Agenda podcast is going on the road. Across the North of England voters will be going to the polls five years on from the dramatic 2019 election where large swathes of our region broke the habit of decades by switching their allegiance from Labour to the Tories, putting Boris Johnson into Downing Street i...

Why is it that bright young people from the North are so much less likely to apply for our two most prestigious universities, Cambridge and Oxford, than their counterparts in the South East and London? It's a question that gets right to the heart of our North-South divide and this week on the podcast Rob Parsons tries to answer it with the help of a Cambridge University academic who got a place th...

This week Rob Parsons finds out about a new museum display celebrating the trailblazing contributions of Muslims living and working in the North of England. Leeds City Museum’s Voices of Asia Gallery is hosting Muslims in the North, which explores the pioneering work of prominent Muslims in fields including commerce, healthcare, law and research. Maria Hussain, lecturer in management and organisat...

This week Rob Parsons speaks to two political best mates who were born just a few miles away from each other in Liverpool and have gone on to be two of the best-known elected figures in our region. Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, and Steve Rotheram, mayor of the Liverpool City Region, have teamed up to write a new book where they share their formative experiences and set out an ambi...

This week the focus of Northern politicians is on Leeds, where the Convention of the North will see hundreds of the region's political and business leaders try and work out how to make our region a powerhouse again. Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove and Labour's Deputy Leader Angela Rayner will be making their pitch about what their parties can do for the North at the two-day Convention of the N...

This week the Northern Agenda switches focus away from the two main political parties to one that seems to be gathering momentum and hopes to do some real damage to the Conservatives at the next General Election. Reform UK, founded by Nigel Farage as the Brexit Party back in 2018 and renamed in 2020 to campaign against lockdown measures during the Covid pandemic, came third in two Parliamentary by...

In big cities like Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool, and Leeds the last few years have seen huge amounts of regeneration, transforming them beyond recognition.  But what about our region's larger satellite towns and smaller cities, many with a proud tradition and history that stretches back to before the Industrial Revolution? With town centres that went into decline in recent years, thanks in par...

Have you ever wondered how award-winning cartoonist Graeme Bandeira comes up with his ideas for this weekly dose of satire in the Northern Agenda newsletter? There have been some crackers in the last year - Environment Secretary Therese Coffey dancing down Redcar beach surrounded by dead crabs, Nadine Dorries throwing her toys out of the pram after not getting a peerage and Michael Gove and Rishi...

For anyone interested in the politics of our region there's really only one story in town this week, that's the long-awaited - and long-delayed - report into the murky goings-on at Teesworks, the flagship regeneration project in the North East. The headline news - at least if you're a Conservative supporter of the scheme - is that it cleared those involved of corruption and illegality. But the 97-...

Is it harder for Northerners to have their voices heard in literature and comedy because of age-old regional biases? That's the question on The Northern Agenda podcast this week with two guests who've explored that thorny topic with academic rigour. Jen Bowden, a journalist and writer from a small pit village called Wingate in County Durham, hosts the Northern Voices podcast but is also working on...

This week Rob Parsons gets listeners up to speed on what could be the most consequential and interesting election in the first half of this year - unless of course Rishi Sunak is forced to call an early General Election in the next few weeks. On May 2 the North East will go to the polls to choose the region's first ever metro mayor, with a host of new powers devolved from Westminster and a multi-b...

This week Northern Agenda Editor Rob Parsons crosses over the Pennines to witness a big day for the Manchester Evening News - a visit from the man who in the next few months is likely to become this country's next Prime Minister. Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer was out and about in the North West as he leaves Westminster behind and tries to connect with the voters he hopes will hand him the keys to...