Why I am keeping an eye on the North East (of England) Combined Authority

The North East of England Combined Authority has been in existence for just under a year since Kim McGuiness was elected Mayor beating Jamie Driscoll and gaining 42% of the voted on a 31% turnout. I voted for Driscoll despite having a lot of reservations about him and the nature of his campaign. He was barred from standing for the Labour nomination by the zionist clique on the National Executive which was a point in his favour but he had supported a Free Port for Tyneside in which trade union rights and environmental protections can be suspended / ignored which was very much not. He is a businessman with very limited political experience before being elected as Mayor of the absurdly named North of Tyne combined authority (much of which was south of the Tyne) and had no real record of trade union activism. He ran the campaign to appeal to everybody on a kind of anti political basis. This might have worked in a transferable note election but this was first past the post. It was certainly not a socialist campaign which would have required attacking Labour for it neo-Blairite and zionist turn and attacking McGuiness for her manifest inexperience and status as a political hack for Labour and being a sort of revenge proxy for Driscoll having defeated Nick Forbes in the North of Tyne Labour selection process. Driscoll has now established his own political party – majority – but it seems to be pretty much a one man band so far.

So what about McGuiness and the Comined authority. First it has a cabinet consisting of Council Leaders alongside a business representative (but no trade union representative) and a community / voluntary sector representative. As usual that person is a charity background individual with no discernible community status. There are substitute members from the councils, business and the community / voluntary sector but the leaders (and Redfern as elected mayor for North Tyneside) have executive functions. This of course is absurd. Council Leaders and Redfern should be devoting their time to their own authorities and not playing at doing something (or more likely very little to nothing) at a regional level. There is no mechanism for political accountability at the regional level unlike the days when Labour was more or less democratic and there were district and county parties. None of these characters other than McGuiness has been directly elected and the non-political character of the cabinet means that the Tory leader of Northumberland has responsibility for the environment – much like giving a clock to a malign monkey.

I am old enough to remember Metropolitan Counties and their structure plans – democratic bodies with a serious focus on confronting issues and creating change.

And what about McGuiness herself – well she lives in Northumberland with her RAF officer husband and posts pictures of her dogs on facebook. She was elected asserting that her priority was getting rid of child poverty – kind of hard that when a major factor in child poverty is the two child benefit cap which has been kept in being by austerity not so light New New Labour and Reeves. There was a big event about this with the usual suspects in attendance but the outcome was just the usual inane drivel about expanding opportunity in an era when educational attainment is no guarantee of a secure life. I promised to do as the Skibbereen Eagle of County Cork did in in the 19th century in relation to the Czar of Russia and keep my eye on them. Not a pretty sight so far.