The Northern Agenda

The Northern Agenda podcast is back after a Christmas break for 2024 - and it seems only right to kick off the year with a look ahead to some of the stories we're going to be talking about in Northern politics in the next 12 months. The impending General Election will surely loom large over political debate in our region. But there are a host of fascinating sub-plots across the North that will mak...

Listeners may not have heard of the village of Daresbury, near Warrington in Cheshire, which has a population of just a few hundred people, though it does have a major claim to fame though as the birthplace of the author Lewis Carroll. But just a few hundred metres away from the village is a facility that is already putting the name Daresbury on the map, at least in science and business circles, a...

After taking a closer look at what's going on in Sunderland, this week the Northern Agenda podcast heads 130 miles south west over the Northern Pennines to the Lancashire city of Preston. Rob Parsons reports from the This Is The North Convention 2023, organised by the People's Powerhouse, a movement that aims to bring people of the North together to discuss, explore, share and celebrate all the am...

What comes into your head when you think of the North East port city of Sunderland? Is it the football team, battling to get back into the Premier League. Or maybe it's car production, with a huge Nissan base now being used to build electric vehicles? For most people, what won't come to mind is the smartest city in the UK, powered by the fastest 5G connections and with passengers travelling in dri...

This week all the attention is on Chancellor Jeremy Hunt as he unveiled his Autumn Statement - or at least the bits that hadn't already been briefed out to the media in advance - in an hour-long speech. In the national media all the talk is about tax cuts - how big are they, when do they start, will they be swallowed up by so-called 'fiscal drag' where millions of people every year lose out by vir...

This week on the podcast Rob Parsons speaks to two fascinating but very different guests. Conservative MP Dehenna Davison has packed a huge amount into her short career so far since being elected in Bishop Auckland in County Durham in 2019 while still in her 20s. Until recently a Levelling Up Minister, this summer she stepped back because of her battle with migraines, but she's got a lot to say ab...

The North in Numbers - the podcast that gets the human stories behind the statistics - is back, taking over The Northern Agenda again this week. Annie Gouk, a journalist who writes local news stories based on statistics for regional papers up and down the country, looks at the data on dog attacks, speaking to experts to try and unpick what’s behind the increase, as well as what needs to be done to...

This podcast loves looking at the positive things going on in our region so in this week's episode Rob Parsons hears about a brilliant project being led in the North of England.  Budding writers and journalists from underrepresented backgrounds could be in with a chance of getting their big break as part of a scheme backed by national treasure Michael Sheen and the Daily Mirror. The ‘A Writing Cha...

There's an election coming in the next year or so, but how much does the public ever get to hear about how the main parties choose their candidates for political office? That's what Rob Parsons has been talking about this week with the broadcaster Michael Crick, who followers of politics over the last 40 years will know is the esteemed broadcaster and journalist who was a founding member of the Ch...

He's been Prime Minister for one year but has Prime Minister Rishi Sunak been good for the North? This week on The Northern Agenda podcast Rob Parsons is joined by the Liverpool Echo's Liam Thorp and Manchester Evening News' Joseph Timan to talk about a year of Sunak, Keir Starmer's challenging week dealing with unrest from Labour's Muslim MPs, and how shutting hotels for asylum seekers might caus...

This week Rob Parsons chats to Amy Newton, the founder of the Manchester Tech Festival which brings together leading figures from the North's tech and digital sectors. We all know technology and digital is going to be a bigger and bigger focus for our political leaders in the coming years, but are we doing enough to make sure people from the North's council estates can get the kind of jobs that ar...

It was a party conference where Keir Starmer came out sparkling after his big speech, but how are things looking for Labour after their annual gathering in Liverpool? Rob Parsons speaks to Liverpool City Region metro mayor Steve Rotheram about what a Labour government could mean for his patch PLUS his plans to take local buses under public control and why he thinks Rishi Sunak's 'Network North' pl...

It's party conference season and the problems are mounting up for Rishi Sunak as the Tories descend on Manchester. Why won't people stop asking him about HS2 coming to Manchester? Why are Conservative members more excited by Liz Truss than by his policies? And how does he persuade the North that he still cares about levelling up? In a special edition of the Northern Agenda podcast recorded at Manc...

We're in party conference season which means politicos, pundits, business types and hangers-on will be filling up the hotels of Manchester this week. As Tory party conference gets underway, Rishi Sunak is struggling to fend off questions about whether he's about to axe the HS2 link to the city. On the podcast this week, Rob Parsons asks what is happening in the Steel City of Sheffield with its new...

On the podcast this week we're getting under the bonnet of an historic moment for public transport in Greater Manchester - which could have a massive impact on mayor Andy Burnham and the wider North. The launch of the Bee Network this Sunday will see buses in Greater Manchester come under public control for the first time since the 1980s. It's a move many hope will reverse years of decline for loc...

As Angela Rayner, newly in post as Labour's Shadow Levelling Up Secretary, told a major union conference this week, "The battle for the General Election is just getting started". And our two guests today will give us an idea about we can expect from the two main parties as we get closer and closer to choosing our next Government, and what it might mean for us in the North. Rob Parsons speaks to Pa...

The North in Numbers - the podcast that gets the human stories behind the statistics - is taking over The Northern Agenda this week. It’s that time of year again - kids are back in the classroom, and applications for next year’s school places are opening. It can be a fraught time for many parents, with the quality of education, location of the school and a child’s friendship group all needing to b...

Anyone who listens to this podcast or reads the Northern Agenda newsletter won't need telling about the incredible strengths the North and its 15 million population boast. But elsewhere in the country, and down in the corridors of power in London, it seems there's still more to do to tell people who matter what our region can do to tackle the many challenges the country faces. In the next few week...

Let's start with a question: how often do you go to your nearest town or city centre? For many, the answer would be: not as much as I used to. And there are a host of reasons for that: the rise of online shopping, people working from home instead of offices, and even the cost of living crisis. It is perhaps easy to understand, then, why Britain has lost 6,000 storefronts in just five years after t...

If you own a small business in the North of England and you're either starting up or trying to grow to the next level, the chances are you'll be after some financial backing to make that happen. But for many firms, access to finance can be hard to come by - and that's where the British Business Bank and its chief executive Louis Taylor comes in. The agency, founded in 2014 and with its headquarter...

If you opened Friday's Northern Agenda newsletter you won't have been able to miss the cartoon by Graeme Bandeira featuring Nadine Dorries, the Merseyside-born Tory MP and former Culture Secretary who seems to be absent without leave from her constituency in Bedfordshire. She's failed to speak in the Commons for more than a year and hasn't voted in Parliament since April, but as her constituents a...

It's been described as the country's longest cul-de-sac, but is the town of Barrow-in-Furness the next powerhouse for the North? That's the vision set out by Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, as he aims to help Barrow take advantage of its thriving shipyard and its status as a green energy hotspot. But as high-skilled workers from across the world descend on Barrow, can it overcome the dire rep...

With the cut and thrust of politics dying down a bit for the summer, Rob Parsons gets his teeth into an issue we all have to confront at some point: the state of our teeth. He looks at the stark North-South divide in England when it comes to rotten teeth and oral health. The Northern Agenda editor speaks to Jennifer Owen, a dentist in the North East, who's administering the fillings and tooth extr...

They could well win three by-elections this week, but actually it's been a tough few days for Keir Starmer's Labour Party, who have had to front up to the fact that some of what he'd hoped to offer the electorate next year just won't be possible because to coin a phrase, there's no money left. It means that in the interests of economic stability a Labour government wouldn't end the cap on benefits...

Back in 2019 as Labour's red wall was crumbling in the North, Boris Johnson ally Nigel Adams was strolling to a 20,000 majority in the safe North Yorkshire seat of Selby and Ainsty. So it says something about how the fortunes of the main parties have changed since then that when locals go to the polls in next week's by-election - caused by Nigel Adams quitting after failing to get a peerage - ther...