​I​f you're into politics it's likely you'll be heading to, or at the very least reading about, one of the big party conferences happening this autumn. By far the biggest is Labour's annual get-together in Liverpool, their first as a new government. ​A​nd anyone who's interested in the future direction of the Labour party will want to ​R​ob Parsons' interview with one of its most interesting new MPs, Josh Simons, MP for Makerfield in Greater Manchester​. ​H​e's a former advisor to Jeremy...

Only a few weeks ago the big story in many of our Northern communities was the rioting and disorder we saw this summer, seemingly sparked by the horrific killing in Southport. We saw violence break out across the country but it seemed like much of it was in the North, places like Sunderland and Darlington, Blackpool, Hull, Preston and Liverpool. Since then we've seen a steady stream of the perpetrators hauled before the courts and in some instances handed hefty prison sentences. But with the...

There's a definite 'back to school' feeling in the air in politics this week. The news agenda is already being dominated by the issues that we're going to be hearing about again and again in the coming months - small boats, the housing crisis and the ravaged state of the public finances. It's back to school for the North's politicians too, and with Westminster resuming after the summer break this week a new Labour MP, Hexham's Joe Morris, is leading not one but two debates in the Commons and...

The Northern Agenda tries to think outside of the box when it comes to both our newsletter and podcast, and in this week’s episode, our guest does exactly that.  Tina Catling is a renowned innovation consultant, author, and speaker, who advises organisations and people around the world on how to unlock creative potential and innovation. She has been running her Leeds-based business ThinkOTB with her partner Mark Davies for 30 years. She tells The Northern Agenda's Dan McLaughlin about her...

We all know there's a big North-South divide when it comes to pay, but which part of the North of England has the highest average wage? Here's a clue, it's not Manchester or Leeds. With an average median annual full-time wage of nearly £42,000, Ribble Valley in Lancashire is the highest-paid local authority area in Northern England. Its residents earn an average of £14,000 a year more than those in Tameside, not too far away in Greater Manchester. The Ribble Valley is a beautiful district...

Politicians and pubs are a combination as old as the hills, with even the likes of teetotal e​x-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak turning up for photo shoots a​t​ local watering holes on the election trail this year. But if our decision-makers stuck about after the cameras disappeared and observed the conversations ordinary pub-goers were having, would they be better informed about their lives and what makes them tick? That's what Ed Shackle and Bertie Wnek, two researchers from policy, research,...

So if you look at the biggest jobs in local government in the North of England, undoubtedly near the top of the list are the chief executives of the city councils of Manchester and Leeds. They're roles that come with responsibility for vital services in our region's two biggest cities, leading thousands of employees and overseeing annual budgets into the hundreds of millions. So with both Tom Riordan, chief executive of Leeds city council, and Joanne Roney, his counterpart in Manchester,...

Just over a year ago, TransPennine Express, which runs intercity services across the North of England, became the latest to come under government control due to its dire performance that had infuriated political leaders and customers. Installed not long after as managing director was Chris Jackson, faced with some formidable hurdles to overcome if TransPennine was to get back on track, not least the refusal of unions to allow their staff to work on their days off and large number of their...

On a brutal General Election night for the Conservatives, there were a few bright spots where their MPs managed to defy the swing to Labour and hang onto their seats. In the North East of England - where Labour otherwise swept the board - just one Conservative MP now remains, Matt Vickers, who won in the new seat of Stockton West despite pre-election polling which suggested it would turn red. He speaks to Rob Parsons about how he managed to defy the odds, what it's been like as a Tory MP...

Doesn't it seem a long time ago that a victorious Boris Johnson took in the applause from Conservatives in Tony Blair's old seat of Sedgefield after winning a host of North East seats in Labour strongholds like Darlington, Redcar and Bishop Auckland in the 2019 General Election? Five years later, the Tories have been all but wiped out in the North East, reduced to just one seat. How did things go so badly wrong and is there a way back for the party in time for the next election? And was...

This week's there's an induction like no other going on in Westminster's corridors of power, as dozens of newly-elected MPs from across the North are introduced to the bewildering intricacies and traditions of life in the epicentre of British democracy. But what's it been like for someone who a week ago was battling to be elected and now finds themselves rubbing shoulders with the nation's political leaders, hundreds of miles from home? Rob Parsons finds out from Lewis Atkinson, who last week...

It's General Election night and Rob Parsons has got himself a front row seat for one of the highest-profile counts in the North: Rishi Sunak's Richmond and Northallerton constituency in North Yorkshire. With Sunak's Conservatives facing near certain defeat to Labour in the polls, the media is waiting for the Prime Minister to show his face in the early hours of the morning - and that's if he can hold onto what used to be a safe seat. Hear Rob's dispatch from election night, where he speaks...

This week voters across the North will be going to the polls for the General Election with all the national polling pointing to a big Labour victory.  But Rob Parsons wants to hear what's happening at local level across the North of England and has reassembled a panel of top political journalists, Liam Thorp from the Liverpool Echo, Joseph Timan from the Manchester Evening News and Graeme Whitfield from the Journal in the North East. They discuss why voters in the North are so...

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 rates, the future of the NHS, pollution in our waterways, and more. Candidates from the five main...

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-orchestrated violence, has just been delivered to the leaders of the UK’s main political parties and the...

​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 hammered from all sides for skipping out of the D-Day 80th anniversary events early. So where better to...

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-doors selections as political activists go hell-for-leather to boost their prospects ahead of the...

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 really means for the north” But have the Conservatives actually managed to deliver on their...

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 local leaders pitched for investment to get major projects off the ground. It was an event that...

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's minds, their mental health and their ability to learn. And one of the politicians articulating...

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 Sunak himself, are preoccupied with what these results mean for the upcoming General Election,...

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 and even managed to lose the mayoral race in Rishi Sunak's backyard in North Yorkshire. ​But...

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 crucially they have a vision for how they can catch up, and Rob speaks to Andy Lock from the charity...

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 Liverpool Echo's Liam Thorp. Meanwhile Liam tells us why he believes it was right to identify...