Fear, tribalism and lies: the woman fighting Liverpool’s anti-Tory vote

Katie Burgess

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Katie Burgess wanted to smash Liverpool’s red wall. Standing as the Conservative candidate in the Liverpool Mayoral election in May 2021, she secured 4.14% of the vote. But as any political blue will tell you, our city is the toughest of nuts to crack. This is her account of life on the (mostly virtual) campaign trail.

It was a rainy night on Zoom and we were a year into the pandemic. Words like ‘lockdown’, ‘furlough’ and ‘bubble’ were now in daily use (as was Zoom) and social distancing, face masks and homeworking were the new ‘normals’. I’d spent the majority of the year in my own four walls, ‘keeping safe’, not least because I am one of England’s estimated 3.7m shielders or to use the latest fancy title, the ‘clinically extremely vulnerable’. That means I cannot have the Covid vaccine due to medical contraindications. With no end to the pandemic in sight, people like me have had to take extra precautions to reduce the risk to our lives. But hiding away from civilisation is not really my style and no special title was going to stop me doing what I knew needed to be done. Besides, I was about to gain a new title – one chosen by the members of the Conservative Party. That’s right, I was to be their candidate for the Liverpool City Mayor Election in May 2021. On my very small laptop screen, I watched as the vote had passed in my favour. I accepted with just a few words. The fun starts here I thought…

I’m no stranger to a challenge. I grew up in a working class, Labour-voting household in Crosby. My dad worked, my mum stayed at home. Life was comfortable but not luxurious. We lived as we could afford and I could have no complaints. Then at 12, I had to learn to walk again after a car accident left me with serious injuries, three years of reconstructive surgery and the need to do a lot of growing up, very quickly. Even now, I still battle ill health on a daily basis. I started my first business in catering at the age of 17 and it was a challenge. Luckily, I wasn’t old enough to drink at the time, and thankfully never started, but I’d have understood the temptation. As a fledgling entrepreneur, I had to learn the rules of commerce the hard way. Now, call it bravery or insanity, I was set to become the face of the Conservative Party in its most hostile political battleground, and boy does this city need new leadership.

Call it bravery or insanity, I was set to become the face of the Conservative Party in its most hostile political battleground.

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Most of the same issues that faced Liverpool in the 2016 election are of course unaddressed – unemployment, high crime, lack of affordable housing, the need to raise skills and educational attainment, and deliver better quality jobs, not to mention a council delivering poor value for money for taxpayers. For that reason my manifesto shared many of the policies from earlier campaigns. But two more urgent issues had appeared since then – the corruption at the heart of our local government and the need for post-Covid recovery – a perfect opportunity for the city to excel. They became central to my campaign and are still the issues I believe are the biggest facing the city right now. The protection of our city's cultural heritage was also a huge issue for me, from preventing the erasure of our street names and statues and everything in-between and this was reflected in the opinions of those who took the time to contact me and discuss their concerns. And of course, just weeks ago the city lost its UNESCO World Heritage Status, which I believe could have been avoided. It’s more than possible for the city to progress and prosper without losing its past identity.

Back to life at the beginning of the Mayoral race and that nomination. Outside of the Conservative Party, my social groups contain very few blue voters, but while my red-voting friends and colleagues weren’t exactly supportive of my candidacy, there was no real vitriol or broken friendships. There was the odd comment like “but your such a lovely, generous person. How come you’re a Tory?” and a family member once advised me that my grandparents “must be spinning in their graves”. “Perhaps,” I told her, “if you’d not had them cremated, that might have been true, but as I remember it, they were proud that I had my own mind and fought for what I believed in, just like they’d always encouraged me to.”

Apparently fortune favours the brave but there’s an exception to every rule and I was under no illusions. A win was at best extremely unlikely and realistically, nigh on impossible. Liverpool was living under heavier Covid restrictions than most of the country and had been for some time. The Conservative government had made the city region a special case and thrown lots of positives at it such as piloting the first attempt at mass city-wide Covid testing, and green-lighting the first trial night club event for 6,000 party goers. However, such is the electorate, negative factors were more likely to be remembered when they headed for the ballot box. In any case, had I woken on polling day to the news that Prime Minister, Boris Johnson had awarded every city resident a £1m tax-free Liverpool Personal Covid Relief Payment, I’d have still suggested those fancying a bet nip to their nearest bookmakers to place their money on a Labour victory.

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Feelings within the Conservative Party were that we were likely to lose some ground in this election. We were staring into the abyss of a campaign under Covid restrictions meaning it was harder than ever to get face-to-face with the voters. Travelling was restricted even in local areas, so our volunteers could not hit the streets in the way we’d all prefer.

Support from the party, both locally and nationally, tended to be found more at the end of the telephone line and by email rather than in person. And as a Covid shielder, I faced even more restrictions than most. So why was I doing this? Why would anybody take on this role in these circumstances? Democracy, I believe, only survives when other voices shout too and I will fight for democracy until my dying breath. I consider it imperative that every voter has the opportunity to vote Conservative. I believe in those policies and values (most of them at least) and what’s more, I can tell you why I do, a trait that seems to be lacking in the average voter. I’ve had many conversations with people who agree with every Conservative word I preach, then usually say something like “you’re right, but we have to vote Labour here don’t we?” often with a tone of regret. I generally resort to one of my favourite words in reply: “Why?” and it’s not uncommon to be greeted with a deafening silence. I have no need or desire to impress the Tory hierarchy or CCHQ as it’s known and I’m not going to trade on my identity as a woman. I don’t think we “need more females” in such positions or indeed any more diversity boxes ticked. You can see I’m female and a lot of other things too; I didn’t feel the need to spout about it during the campaign and never have. I firmly believe that what we need are the right people in the right places doing the right things. Meritocracy is not a dirty word. Discrimination whether standard or positive is abhorrent and I’ll stand against it at every turn. I stood because I needed to. Because Liverpool needed me to.

So my ‘Covid-time’ campaign was unrecognisable from what it would have been in normal times. There could be no door knocking, leafleting was limited, hustings went online and were generally plagued with technology issues. Those hustings that were held in person I was excluded from because of my Shielder status, but I provided statements to them all to get across that Conservative message. Whether they were read out or not, I will never know of course, except for one, on BBC TV, where my contributions were used to start each round of debate. I was disappointed for missing at least the opportunity to call out the other candidates on their claims and accusations. It seems the Tories are always to blame at a city council where there is not one Tory anything or anyone. The same applies to the five parliamentary constituencies of Liverpool it seems, despite all being occupied by Labour MPs too. I wonder who they would blame if there was a Labour government in Westminster? One of my opponents even questioned on Twitter if I existed. Quite concerning for a man who I’ve met on several occasions and who holds such a high position at the disgraced council already. Perhaps a short memory is required to hold those roles.

Campaign material had to be created and so written pieces and photographs were needed quickly, with numerous requests and deadlines generally short. As a shielder, unable to venture out in public, the usual options for photo opportunities were impossible. As one who generally stands behind a camera rather than in front, finding current pictures was a real challenge and taking new ones was not an option owing to the unfortunate timing of minor eye surgery which had left me looking like a mugging victim. So a desperate call went out to friends and family for anything they may have which could be forwarded onto the Conservative press department. What we were left with was not ideal.

Social media, an alien concept to me and a virtual cesspit, became a daily presence in my life. Messages, letters and emails were plentiful ranging from the sweet to the sour to downright hateful, X-rated suggestions with pictures provided to illustrate the point, just in case I misunderstood. I also received dinner date invitations and even marriage proposals - all of the above politely refused. A break from campaigning was called by order of the party, quite correctly in respect to the sad loss of the Duke of Edinburgh. The Queen as ever provided a wonderful example of dignity to us all.

Labour Councillor, Nick Small, took to Twitter to comment that my party had to go “all the way to Crosby for a candidate” proving there are no limits to small-minded parochialism.

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Plenty wanted to tell me “you’re not even a Scouser” and indeed they did most days. I’ve never claimed to be. I was born in the city centre and raised in Sefton. I’m proud of both facts. Who one defines as a Scouser is, like most things, up for debate and I support everybody’s right to their own opinion. I also stood in Liverpool Central ward as a local council candidate against (sitting) Labour opponent, Christine Banks. Her fellow Labour Councillor, Nick Small, also of the same constituency, took to Twitter to comment, negatively it seemed, that my party had had to go “all the way to Crosby to find a candidate”. All 6.7 miles of it no less, proving there are no limits to small-minded parochialism.

I received an enquiry from a journalist asking why I hadn’t attended a hustings hosted by Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Extinction Rebellion. I provided the simple and honest answer that I was undergoing a scan at the time, which I’d waited 11 months for. Nothing was ever published.

“Another day, another threat” became a regular joke in our house, as the abusive messages rolled in, sometimes multiple times a day. They say the pen is mightier than the sword but the keyboard is rather weak in my experience. I wondered how many of the trolls would have bothered if they’d had to go to the expense of a stamp? While taking my milk in, I was doorstepped one day, late in the campaign by a journalist who seemed to think that I was unvaccinated due to pregnancy (the truth was far less exciting). She wanted to know how I planned to undertake the job of Mayor when surely I would have to go on maternity leave at some point. While I was amused to think that she thought I had a hope of winning, I sadly had to confirm that there had been no immaculate conception during my now 13 months of social distancing and shielding in singledom. Mind you, I said, if she thought giving birth to the new Messiah would aid my campaign, I’d certainly be willing to give it a try. She looked blankly at me and promptly left. I’m not sure she understood the reference to Christian doctrine. The local media on the whole though were OK to me – reactions ranged all the way from sympathetic and polite but neutral, to disinterested and some were a little aggressive. Pretty much as expected. Many articles covering the election, especially in the left-wing press simply failed to mention that I was running at all. Others quoting most, if not all of the other candidates simply added something on the lines of “also standing is Conservative, Katie Burgess”, usually when I hadn’t even been approached for comment. Manners cost nothing though and every request, message and note to our campaign team was answered one way or another and regardless of tone or context, with a little help from those Conservative friends.

As a candidate I was invited to an online meeting to hear what Max Caller had to say, straight from the horse’s mouth, about his investigation into the city council. The report itself made for sickening reading, but to hear Mr Caller, an out-of-towner, describe his dreadful experiences of my home town council was soul-destroying, causing me to shed tears of anger and sorrow in equal measure. Some of his revelations sounded more akin to North Korea than North John Street. My own laptop camera wasn’t working that day, I suspect an act of God, but I watched on the screen the faces of the other candidates, some of whom were already prominent members of that condemned council, and hoped for signs of remorse. I’m still hoping.

The hardest day of the campaign didn’t start well and got worse. I awoke that morning with breathing difficulties and a fever that the American singer, Peggy Lee would have been proud of. I’d contracted a virus, though thankfully, not Covid-19 – I prefer not to follow the latest trends. No sooner had I opened my eyes, when the news reached me that somebody had thrown a brick through the window of my admin office. While I’ll never know for sure if it was targeted at my campaign, I’ll always have my suspicions. I’d not even seen inside that office for quite some time, but adorning the main wall is a framed copy of the poem ‘No Enemies’ by Charles Mackay – “If you have none, small is the work that you have done”, he wrote. Life imitating art in the mayoral election. The day continued with the news that at the last minute a planned “on the street” campaigning event would have to move online meaning we reached far less people and did it in a far more impersonable way. Covid throws up obstacles at every turn but I’m eternally grateful for the efforts of all the volunteers. Then the really bad news reached us that a family friend had passed away and I found myself, not for the first time, unable to run, open-armed to the aid of a grieving friend as I normally would have. All this and it was not even lunchtime! At least a local emergency glazier did well that day. I do love to champion small business.

Liverpool’s Labour vote is actually an anti-Tory vote created out of fear, tribalism and downright lies, handed from one generation to the next like a dominant gene.

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Polling day dawned. Normally, this would be the opportunity for one last push - taking to the streets with activists, meeting voters, making visits to polling stations. None of that happened. Instead, it consisted of Covid testing, a hospital appointment, discussions with the police about the numerous threats I’d received, and fielding more telephone calls than a switchboard operator. One of which came from Amanda Milling, Conservative Party Co-Chairman. She wished me well, thanked me on behalf of the party and informed me that Boris Johnson had been in Hartlepool. I told her that out of the two, it was certainly the ‘pool’ with the much better chance and seeing that go blue too would make my day.

After much debate and medical advice, I was able to attend the socially distanced, Covid-safe election count, which took place the day after the election. The winner was announced and the collective Conservative hope for a new start for Liverpool was dashed. I listened to Joanne Anderson, the newly elected Labour Mayor, make her victory speech, but it seemed her gender and ethnicity were more important for us to hear about than her policies, and of course she laid the blame for everything that her Conservative-less, Labour council had done, at the door of the Tories. To my ears, there was no condemnation for the administration of which she was already a part, no level of shame and no indication of any comprehension of the challenge awaiting her. It seemed to me that this Mayor Anderson had certainly learned from the previous one, though sadly in all the wrong ways. It’s been four months since the election and the disappointments are still vast. Mayor Anderson herself has certainly not said or done anything to inspire any confidence in me and I’ve not heard anything positive from the rest of her cabinet either. The city deserves and should demand much better and much more. It can only do so at the ballot box. A prime opportunity, wasted. Nothing has changed.

So how does one pull a city, as mighty and stoical as Liverpool out of the political wilderness? By starting with an unpopular truth. You may not like it, but it’s hard to argue with. Liverpool’s Labour vote is actually an anti-Tory vote created out of fear, tribalism and downright lies, handed down from one generation to the next like a dominant gene from a Labour Party intent on perpetuating the fallacy (for their own ends) that Conservatives hate Liverpool. They do not.

The voters are suffering under an illusion, their very own Scouse Stockholm Syndrome, while the remainder suffer from disillusion, those being the almost 70% (the silent majority) who don’t even turn up to vote. Such is the feeling of repression and indifference. Where else on earth would the voters democratically re-elect a regime who’s heinous abuse of them had been exposed just weeks before? The Conservative Party have a lot to offer Liverpool and would turn this city into the behemoth that it should be. Convincing the electorate of this message, when the word is… ‘Conservatives are bad news’, is a daunting task but an essential one. In the right hands, this city has huge potential with acres and acres of undeveloped, brownfield plots and incomplete, abandoned developments. It could attract and draw-in more people wanting to raise families and start businesses, and do a better job of appealing to inward investors, but it fails to attract them because of the regional economy’s stagnant state and the lack of promise of anything different.

The voters had other options besides Labour and Conservative of course - five of them to be precise, including Stephen Yip, who did better than any previous Independent, likely thanks to rebellious Labour voters who’d finally had enough. But still the old unfaithful hung on. I’d have been shocked if they hadn’t, but it was certainly progress to see this election go to the second vote, a first for the city. But it’s progress that needs to go much further, much faster. Liverpool is a Labour city on paper but when one considers the poor turnout in the mayoral election (30.51%) and the Labour candidate’s share of the vote in the first round (38.51%) that equates to just 11.8% of the Liverpool electorate who want them in office. And that’s assuming that every one of those voters actually knows what they are voting for and has made an informed decision. I often play the “rule of three” and find it a good marker in most things. I give people three chances in various circumstances and call it on the outcome. When in conversation with a typical Liverpool Labour voter I ask them to name me their 3 favourite Labour policies. I can’t recall a single time any of them could.

Much like my beliefs were formed at a young age, I believe the answer to a political revolution lies with educating future generations. Political allegiance should not be inherited but formed with an open mind, free will and access to the facts. People need to hear the grim truth of life under Labour, not the Grimms’ Fairytale fiction of Tories as playground bogeymen. I don’t want people to take my word for it. I want them to seek the truth for themselves. The truth of Liverpool is right in front of everybody’s eyes. It seems there really is none so blind as those who cannot or perhaps will not see. In July the new regime at the council voted unanimously to accept the findings of the Caller Report and implement all of the recommendations made. This is at a cost of £2.5m to the Liverpool taxpayer. A huge bill just to start putting right the wrongs of those, still gifted positions of power. One can only hope that the city council, now under commissioner control for the next three years, will be forced to bring about long term change.

I’ve said before and I’ll say it again, likely many times - I love Liverpool, but politically at least, I find it very difficult to like. But it’s worth remembering, that it’s just a small minority holding the city captive. We need to engage with the current non-voters, listen to their concerns and encourage them to use their vote with conviction to elicit the change that the city’s long-term survival depends upon.

As for my result? 4.14% (up from 3.62% the last time around) - actually an increase so against expectations, ground gained and all things considered, a bit of a triumph. Meanwhile, upon hearing the result, my predecessor as Conservative Mayoral candidate, Tony Caldeira, standing loyally there at my socially-distanced side for support, had smiling eyes for me atop his Covid face mask, and so all was well. Our end-of-campaign hugs, however, would still have to wait…

So the race for the future of Liverpool goes on. With my fellow Conservatives we’ll keep on running, never hiding, in every election, in every seat, in every ward, every time. No fear.

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Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it!

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Lynn Haime

Following the announcement in July that UNESCO have stripped Liverpool of its World Heritage Status, there have been a myriad of social media posts and articles about what this means (or doesn’t mean) for the City. Some expressed mild disappointment and some adopted a more ‘we’ll be fine without it’ approach.

It did, however, make me pause to consider my city - its charms, shortcomings, history and future and ultimately conclude that, once again, the external perception of Liverpool will have unfairly taken a knock.

Having lived, studied or worked in the South, Birmingham and Manchester over the past 20 or so years it reminded me that, unlike any other city, we regularly have to defend our position and correct misinformed views of Liverpool. I have penned this article for colleagues, friends and family who have either never visited the city, or have not revisited it for years. Some of the views of those who are unfamiliar with Liverpool are exacerbated by the consistent and inaccurate stereotypes from the ill-informed. Hangovers from days of rioting and overtly vocal politicians dominating our screens in the 80s, to the more light hearted, tracksuit-donning, curly wig-wearing characters portrayed on television – admittedly very funny at the time, but over 30 years later, they are just an irritating perpetuation of an image which couldn’t be further from today’s Liverpool.

In 2008, Liverpool was European Capital of Culture which catapulted the city to another, much more positive level of exposure. The significant impact of that is still felt today - on cultural initiatives, regeneration, visitor numbers and economic growth. Clearly all is not yet perfect and we sighed in collective exasperation at the recent exposure of questionable practices from certain high-level public servants. It was a setback caused by a very small minority which unfortunately reinforced some of those outdated stereotypes. The majority of us work hard to promote the city, encourage investment and enhance the already exciting opportunities which exist. But this was a disappointing blow. However, it is being addressed admirably by Tony Reeves, the current Chief Executive of Liverpool City Council. He has helped to expose the previous, less scrupulous practices and promote a more transparent and trustworthy platform on which to build.

…we regularly have to defend our position and correct misinformed views of Liverpool.

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One of the key concerns cited by UNESCO was the development of Everton’s new 52,000-capacity stadium on the waterfront. Its official address is Bramley-Moore Dock, which Wikipedia describes as ‘a semi-derelict dock on the River Mersey’. It’s a stone’s throw away from Bootle which remains one of the most deprived areas in the UK. Everton FC have jumped through planning and heritage hoops and will be investing over £500m in developing their new stadium, which will deliver an estimated £1.3bn boost to the local economy, create more than 15,000 jobs and attract 1.4m new visitors to the city.

The project budget includes £55m for ‘preserving, restoring and celebrating the heritage assets’ and is located in an unloved part of town and what was the ‘buffer zone’ of the World Heritage designation. The main UNESCO site was focused elsewhere, around the majestic Three Graces (The Grade 1 listed Royal Liver Building, Port of Liverpool and Cunard buildings). Regardless of UNESCOs decision, all three remain standing proud and unaffected, overlooking the Mersey and adjacent to the magnificent Royal Albert Dock.

The area connecting Everton’s new stadium to that world famous waterfront is largely under the ownership of Peel Land & Property and their £5.5bn Liverpool Waters project. Should that scheme ever go-ahead, it will bring further regeneration and investment to entirely new communities along the waterfront, providing a vital link between the city centre, the northern fringe and the new stadium.

Everton FC have jumped through planning and heritage hoops and will be investing over £500m in developing their new stadium…

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Also in the mix is the Stanley Dock and Ten Streets Regeneration area including the Titanic Hotel, one of Liverpool’s most popular stay-overs and the Grade II Listed Tobacco Warehouse, Europe’s largest brick building and soon to be home to 538 apartments and 100,000 sq ft of new commercial space. My own view, echoing many others, is that whilst UNESCO endorsement was nice to have, this investment and regeneration will be far more wide-reaching, directly beneficial for the city and a real catalyst for future growth. I would encourage anyone who hasn’t visited Liverpool to come and see it for themselves. I’ve found over the years that those with negative views of the city are those least familiar with it. It seems this can also be said of UNESCO who made their decision without setting foot here in over 10 years.

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A future Liverpool skyline after UNESCO?

The overwhelming majority of comments on the removal of World Heritage Status expanded on the many virtues of Liverpool, far more eloquently than I could. The culture, history, architecture, the magnificent cathedrals, the waterfront, two world-class football clubs, successful universities, its extensive talent pool, world leading science institutions, incredible nightlife, and the amazing people. Of course, no commentary on Liverpool would be complete without mention of the four sons of the city. The most successful group of all time and famous the world over, The Beatles still generate around £20m per year for Liverpool through tourism. The removal of our World Heritage badge will not deter the streams of overseas visitors hopping on to the Magical Mystery bus to Penny Lane, Strawberry Fields, The Cavern, and the birthplaces of John and Paul. As one of my southern colleagues mentioned, Abbey Road… I pointed out that this was in London and rested my case.

Lynn Haime is a Partner at commercial property consultancy, Matthews and Goodman. She heads up their Liverpool office.

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Is profit a dirty word in Liverpool?

Paul Bryan

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Liverpool is, as the oft-told story goes, famously a socialist city. From the powerful campaigning firebrand, Bessie Braddock in the 1950s, through Derek Hatton and The Boys from the Black Stuff all the way to union-supremo Len McCluskey, and the huge, open-air campaign rallies which treated Jeremy Corbyn as saviour. Bar the occasional intermission from the Liberals, Labour has pretty much had its own way since the Beatles broke up.

One common thread through the politics of all those years is a strong dose of what I’d call working class patrician moralism – with the leaders of the movement strongly convinced they know what’s good for the rest of us. As Steve Fielding noted in The Spectator, for better or worse, Labour has always been on a moral crusade, with its core supporters convinced they are on the right side of history, particularly in the fights against inequality, and for social justice. Occasionally, this has taken a semi-religious turn such as when ex-Prime Minister, Tony Blair declared himself ‘my brother’s keeper’, though this moral high-handedness may also have played its part in Labour’s last historic general election defeat under Corbyn – with Blair himself urging the party to stop ‘deluding ourselves that belief in our own righteousness is enough’. In Liverpool though, this ‘Labour knows best’ quality appears to be a home banker for success at the ballot box, even in the face of some quite outrageous revelations from the recent Caller Report into the workings of Liverpool City Council and the office of ex-Major Joe Anderson.

Aspiration, anyone?

“Why are people buying yachts? What do you need a yacht for, for heaven sake?”, exclaimed Liverpool City Council’s now Deputy Major and economic lead, Jane Corbett in a public debate hosted by The Royal Society of the Arts on one of those glorious pre-Covid days of 2018. ‘Because you might want one’ didn’t seem like the kind of answer, Councillor Corbett would give the time of day. Clearly there are some things one just shouldn’t spend your money on. The moralistic tone remains alive and kicking.

A deep ideological failure lies at the heart of the city region

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Quibbles about the advisability of ocean-going luxuries aside (from a councillor representing a maritime city), there was something else notable in that discussion. Leading a debate on ‘How not to run an unfair business’, was a certain, Charles Wookey, CEO of charity, A Blueprint for a Better Business (BBB). You may not have heard of them, but Liverpool City Council certainly have. Their ethical business pitch has been adopted wholesale by the city’s leadership in both the pre-and post Joe Anderson days. Liverpool’s ‘Inclusive Growth Plan for a Stronger, Fairer City’, published in 2018 along with their Council Procurement Policy, and Fair City Policy were straight out of the BBB playbook; as is the just published 2021 City Plan by Team Liverpool, a collection of the city’s leading lights in the public and third sectors. The adoption of these principles which coalesce around the idea of ‘fairness’ is likely having a profound effect on the city’s approach to attracting investment and its hopes for post-Covid recovery. From informing the overall meta-diagnosis of Liverpool’s economic problems and its preferred solutions, to the instigation of new restrictions on the terms under which the Council is prepared to issue contracts of work, ‘fairness’ is the lens through which the city’s future opportunities will be filtered. Or at least, that is the stated intention. Moonlighting as a member of Blueprint’s Advisory Council, it’s likely Councillor Corbett has played the key role in drawing Liverpool’s leaders into BBBs way of thinking and their (albeit free) management coaching services.

The high priests of purpose-driven business

Quite how this adoption of fairness may affect Liverpool’s economic future, is something I’ll get to later, but first it’s worth asking, is there anything sinister about this relationship between Liverpool’s leaders and Blueprint? No. There’s no conspiracy here. But is it something we should be worried about? Perhaps. After all, if Blueprint have the ear of those responsible for driving much needed investment into the region, it’s important to understand what is being advocated and what effects it’s likely to have on the ground. Especially because BBB have a somewhat pessimistic view on the traditional role of the private sector and are keen to change the way it works. In essence, they believe the world needs a ‘system change’ in which businesses are driven, not by profit, but by a ‘purpose’ that benefits society. They want to see our economic system “optimised for human wellbeing and a sustainable eco-system”, rather than for growth. As Wookey goes on to explain, they are out to displace two dominant ideas – “one, that the purpose of business is to maximise profit, and the other, that people are self-interested and motivated simply by money, status and power.”

For Blueprint For A Better Business, the search for profit, allied to that pesky desire to want more (growth) is put in the dock, tried and found guilty of crimes against society. You’ll be familiar with the narrative because these days it passes for common sense. The sins of business or at least large corporations, we’re told, are legion. Hooked on short-term profits and thinking of nothing but shareholder value at the expense of everything and everyone else, large businesses are seen as the fox in the henhouse, in need of some serious therapy to get over their compulsion to be a destroyer of worlds. If you are haunted by nightmares about the excesses of capitalism – from the oil spills of Deep Water Horizon to the sweat shops of Thailand, this sentiment will strike a chord. Closer to home – zero-hours contracts, glass-ceilings and the peddling of sugary drinks to the obese are just the tip of a well-rounded rap sheet of sin.

You could be forgiven for thinking these ideas sound kind of socialist or green-socialist and you can understand why these sentiments might appeal to those of a left-wing persuasion - the Left have been hankering for a system change since, well, forever. But and this is interesting, behind BBB lies not an activist fringe group, but a team of hardened senior business professionals. Blueprint count amongst their number former executives from organisations such as Unilever, M&S, UNESCO, Goldman Sachs and the TUC. And they were founded by an Archbishop (of Westminster). If anything, their roots lie in Christian morality and the belief that everybody should be treated with dignity and that we are never more fulfilled than when in service to others.

An unlikely moral alliance

So, what you find is two things coming together that can comfortably live in an accommodation. A moral desire to be and do ‘good’ in business circles and a deep-felt criticism of the failings of the market on the Left. From both angles, they feel the need for something new. But, and here’s a bit of a kicker – outside of the odd Extinction Rebellion march and the extremes of Momentum, nobody is really asking to completely up-end capitalism (let’s face it, not even the Chinese). Partly, because we’ve seen some of the alternatives and they weren’t great. But also, because well … we need business and everyone knows it – especially those who work in one. Or buy products from one. Or who have the good fortune to spend the money raised from taxing them. Money makes the world go round. So, with a deep breath, the conclusion is reached - what we need, it seems, is a Faustian pact.

And that’s where Blueprint For A Better Business comes in. They take the high moral ground and try to translate it into some kind of actionable programme for business leaders and the politicians who regulate them. And the price of the ticket is simply accepting that making a profit is not enough. Or even a worthy pursuit. It’s something that is allowed but only as a reward for achieving a definable social purpose as part of a renewed social contract between business and society. Even then profits are only acceptable if they are ‘fair’.

As a result, for businesses, dealing with the local authority becomes more challenging. If you want their ear and their help, increasingly you need to show you’re hitting or at least on a journey to hit Blueprint’s five core principles – that you’re honest and fair; a good citizen; have a social purpose, are a responsible employer and are a guardian for future generations. Sure, some of those translate to perfectly decent goals such as welcoming more scrutiny, achieving the Real Living Wage or paying your taxes on time. But many others are just plain subjective. Who gets to decide what is ‘fair’? And what qualifies those who sit in judgement?

It’s so tempting for public authorities to create a wall of additional requirements that make it harder for businesses to focus on their core task – and these are additionally burdensome for smaller organisations who just don’t have the bandwidth to keep up. What’s more, because fairness (whether outcomes or in process) is so subjective, prejudices can be projected onto the process of deciding who is and isn’t a worthy business partner, which can have disastrous unintended consequences.

Monetising social value

How’s that for a ‘pro-investment environment’? Can you imagine the Google’s and Apple’s of this world knocking down the city’s door, with those kinds of trade-offs? How about Amazon? You know, maybe they would. After all, we live in the age of the activist CEO. Of IKEA and Grolsch suspending their adverts from the new TV broadcaster, GB News, because the station didn’t match their ‘humanistic values’; while in the light of the Black Lives Matter protests, racial equality is now used to sell sausages. I doubt there’s a single business school that isn’t running modules on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The mantra that ‘Being Good is Good for Business’ is somewhat of an unchallengeable tenant of acceptable belief – even if the data is less convincing.

Of course, it does raise the question, if you are being good to be seen to do good so that you can personally benefit, are you still doing ‘good’? For anyone who has seen the documentary, The Corporation (2003) or read the book, you’ll know that big business has been described as psychopathic for this very reason. They have a tendency to reflect back what they think you want to hear, so that you will do what they want you to do (buy their products). But to be sceptical for one minute, the morals and values to which business attaches itself, tend to be fluid. As writer, Nick Asbury writes in his incredibly insightful article for The Creative Review, when brands like Dove, Pepsi and McDonalds mix social issues with a sales message, not only does it come across as crass, but “Whenever you see a brand adopt a cause – whether it’s Andrex doing Clean or Dove doing Feminism – it’s always with the zeal of a recent convert. They are going to be the one to lead the conversation…because brands always have to cast themselves as the hero.” Damn right!

Can councils avoid being gamed?

Of course, councils like Liverpool know that when they are encouraging employers to act fair and be enlightened and ethical in their dealings, those businesses (especially the big ones who have more budget and resource) are more than capable of gaming the system. For example, paying for trees to be planted to counter-act emissions is generally seen as ‘greenwash’. Donating to a foodbank when you are squeezing the life out of farmers would likely go in the same category. All it takes, is a small charitable donation, a glossy video and social media campaign and hey presto, you are on the right side of the moral maze. Even better if you managed to cut your plastic use by 10% or start a conversation about body shape. This does point to a certain naivety in BBBs position and that of our elected local representatives. Who really wants to be taking moral lessons from a business? Did anyone vote for them? What is it about their constitution that makes us believe, that when the chips are down – their ‘purpose’ is anything other than to do the thing that allows them to continue to exist – making a profit?

I should point out that the purpose of this article is not to attack business – but to defend it from those who would wrap it up in unnecessary restrictions sourced from their own Instagramable prejudices. There are a host of dangers hidden under that appealing label of ‘fairness’.

CEOs – pack in the inferiority complex

But first, business leaders need to remember that their companies do already have a ‘social purpose’ and it’s one they don’t have to apologise for. Successful businesses provide products and services that customers want. And those outputs make people’s lives better – saving them time, bringing pleasure, opening up new opportunities and experiences. They innovate new technologies and processes transforming productivity and delivering progress across society. They create wealth – investing in jobs which transform lives, because there is one thing you can know for certain – if you want to give your life some purpose and you haven’t got a job, the first thing you should do, as psychologist Jordan Peterson recommends in his book, 12 Rules for Life – is get a job. No matter how crummy the job, you’ll feel better about yourself and ready to make the next step. The profits of business also fund every social programme in existence - from educating the next generation, to the safety net of social care. Maybe our CEOs should spend less time worrying about their lack of purpose or signalling their virtue and more time remembering that their core profit-making mission is one that delivers more benefits to society than any social state-funded programme. They do a magnificent job of making billions of lives better. And they do it, by tapping into the core human motivation to improve your lot. Is it time to resuscitate Gordon Gekko?

Some investors not welcome in Liverpool

“If Amazon isn’t on a journey (of improvement), no, I wouldn’t want them anywhere near us.” Back to Liverpool’s Deputy Major, Jane Corbett and that public debate. She was asked if Liverpool would follow New York’s lead and reject a big business like Amazon if they were looking to invest. She’d already said she takes a tick list of the 5 core Blueprint For A Better Business values around with her when she visits local companies. “We’d sit down and have a talk… Are they going to benefit the city? Are they going to pay us proper business rates? Why are they coming to Liverpool? Because we’ve got people so desperate, they might work for them?”

Let that sink in. Some people might be so desperate that they’d choose to take a job. The Councillor would save them from that misery. BBB values being used to turn away investment.

Leaving with a pocket full of dreams and returning with the same.

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Corbett talks about commerce in very moral terms – good investors, good money, good businesses - presumably in contrast to bad investors, bad money and bad businesses. Perhaps this is not entirely surprising in a region still reeling from revelations about alleged cronyism, property deals gone wrong and lack of accountability under ex-Major Joe Anderson. But, given Corbett’s background in the Labour movement, it seems plausible that her moral qualms are founded at least in part by a generalised feeling of antipathy towards the dirty business of business. An instinct that at best, sees private enterprise as an unfortunate price to be paid in return for a state-funded shopping list of social provision. Back to that Faustian pact. If you’re going to sup with the devil, use a long spoon. Or in this case, an obligation for business to be purpose-led, not profit-led. I wonder what the Dragons Den presenters would make of that? Maybe they’d agree? The plan, according to Corbett is to show BBB definitions of what makes a good business to the next generation of young people so that “hopefully it becomes embedded in the city.”

But what does it mean in the here and now?

In one aspect, Liverpool is very far from unique. In 2013, central government introduced the Public Services (Social Value) Act, which requires all those responsible for commissioning public services to think about how they can derive wider social, economic and environmental benefits from any contract. Public servants keep a keen eye on additional benefits for their area or stakeholders – be it jobs and apprenticeships, green initiatives, equality and inclusivity drives and so on. The public procurement process has become more complex as a result and more subjective as businesses applying for work need to provide evidence for a raft of measures that fall outside their core mission to provide a good quality service or product at the right price. The government freely admits councils have sometimes struggled to implement it, and issued an updated Social Value Model in December 2020, which for now will be used by central government departments only.

The findings of the recent damning Caller Report into Liverpool City Council however, showed how good intentions can deliver poor outcomes. The report, led by an independent inspector, found “multiple apparent failures” in the council’s highways, regeneration and property management functions. Plots of land worth over £1m were sold for £1 plus overage – a share in future value increases. Sixty-five property deals negotiated by the council were examined by the inspector and problems were found with all of them.

What starts in the head - An economic misdiagnosis?

As reported in PlaceNorthWest, Caller questioned how social value had been interpreted under Joe Anderson’s administration - “the mayor’s…concept of social value was best achieved by employing contractors with a Liverpool postcode base” – which resulted in deals that failed to reach the council’s statutory duty to achieve best value. There you have it. Decisions founded in a moral position to extract social value (by choosing Liverpool-based suppliers) resulted in less value for local taxpayers. The ideas in your head shape the reality on the ground. Attempts to pass off the administration’s inadequacies as merely an embodiment of the ‘bad apple’ theory – where all the faults are caused by the actions of a few rogue individuals, seem unpersuasive as a complete explanation.

What if some of the biggest flaws in the Joe Anderson administration were ideological, rather than just managerial? What if their understanding of what’s ailing the Liverpool economy and what it needs led them to make bad decisions? What if those flaws are still present today under the Mayorship of his replacement – Joanne Anderson (no relation)? After all, though she may have changed the makeup of the cabinet – many of the councillors were elected under both leaders. What if Liverpool Labour is the problem? And what if the council’s relationship with Blueprint For A Better Business is the clearest indication yet of what’s going wrong?

Snubbing the PM, for the people

"I can never respect somebody who won't apologise for what he said…And he won't do that and until he does that, I've refused to shake his hand when it was offered to me last year and I'll continue to do that." So said Steve Rotherham, the recently re-elected Liverpool City Region Metro Mayor talking about his relationship with the country’s most powerful man, Boris Johnson, the UK Prime Minister. As he explained on the BBC’s Political Thinking Podcast, the bad blood dated back to the 2004 Spectator article about the Hillsborough disaster that was published (but not written) by Johnson when he was the magazine’s editor.

The piece had wrongly claimed the city was in denial about the role "drunken" fans had played in the 1989 tragedy and had a tendency to "wallow in victim status". Understandably, the article caused wide-spread offence throughout Liverpool.

Talking about the work Steve had done with Boris over implementing Covid testing trials in Liverpool, Steve concluded, "it was really difficult for me to do business with somebody I had no respect whatsoever for, but I had to do the right thing... for the people in the Liverpool City region."

Did Steve do the right thing? Putting aside the question of whether Boris has already apologised (possibly repeatedly), the primary responsibility of a Regional Mayor is to put the interests of their constituents first. Steve comes across as a moral and decent man but on this occasion, he may have put his personal feelings ahead of his duty. Alienating the Prime Minister, who as prize-giver-in-chief has more influence over the direction of government investment than anyone else, doesn’t feel like the pragmatic move. So far, the UK government’s ‘Levelling Up’ agenda, which has seen government departments relocating from London to other parts of the country, has by-passed Liverpool. It is certainly not the first time the city region has missed out on big-ticket investments. From High Speed 2 to the relocation of the C4 headquarters to the north, or even the new UK Infrastructure Bank, Liverpool remains off the map.

Sticking it to the Tories was also a favoured pastime of Joe Anderson, who bitterly and publicly complained about the effect of Tory cuts to the council’s budget. Many times, he took to the airwaves to gripe; sometimes coloured with doom-laden predictions about the inevitability of riots. Even on the occasions when he had the then Prime Minister, David Cameron’s attention (for once) he quickly found himself ensconced in tit-for-tat battles, such as the time in 2013 when the goal of promoting the inaugural International Festival of Business was overshadowed by public arguments between the two men about the city’s rough treatment by the government. How to win friends and influence people it was not. Playing to the gallery it certainly was.

Lack of belief results in puppets

What ties the tales of Steve and Joe together is that sense of outraged moralism triumphing over pragmatically doing what needs to be done to get the rewards for your people. Sometimes, however unpalatable, you have to suck it up. And maybe, if you’ve stopped really seeing the prize on offer and how big it could be, and just how much you are missing out on – well then maybe you’re just less motivated to try. Maybe your words about aspiration and the ‘best days being ahead’ are hollow and just for the gallery, because deep-down you don’t believe it yourself. While Joe Anderson, when in power, was playing with (giant) French puppets (x3), grandstanding about Tory cuts, and messing about with bus lanes, other regions were taking a more pragmatic view, doing the hard yards in Westminster and private sector boardrooms to secure the influence which led to vital investments such as the nearly £40m Manchester pocketed for establishing the National Graphene Institute in 2015 or the 2022 Commonwealth Games which went to Birmingham. It’s hard to think of many (any?) Liverpool equivalents as the leadership tended to focus on ultra-short-term photo-opportunity wins such as the International Business Festival, now much shrunk and rebadged in the favoured moral terms, ‘Good Business Festival’.

Even Joe’s annual trips to MIPIM, Europe’s largest property convention, which were often treated to excitable rolling commentary and great fanfare in the Liverpool Echo, tended to result in little more than glossy CGIs of the still largely unbuilt Liverpool Waters. Leaving with a pocket full of dreams and returning with the same has generally been the order of the day. So, either Joe’s team were not very good at pitching or coming up with investable ideas, or they didn’t try hard enough. Maybe, it just didn’t seem that important to them.

In Liverpool business circles, the talk never strays far from the subject of skills, or more precisely the lack of them. When not re-locating their businesses out of the region like premium sports brand Castore did only recently, CEOs like Asif Hamid of Wirral-based, The Contact Company are left lamenting the shallow talent pool and the slowing effect it has on growth. The worry is that too many leave school without qualifications and families that have never seen anyone attend university become cut-off from the best opportunities. But there is nothing new in this. Liverpool has suffered a brain drain for decades –as many of the best and brightest are forced to seek opportunities elsewhere. Even today, with its healthy student population, the city has a graduate retention rate lower than many of its city rivals. There’s no mystery here. Jobs are the trigger for rising educational attainment. Fail to build a diverse and deep job market and those that can, will move elsewhere.

Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) 2020

Ranking UK cities & towns by the number of FDI-financed projects they have secured (sub-selection displayed only). Liverpool ranked 14th between 2011-2020 but has slipped to 17th in the last year of recorded data.

Source: EY Attractiveness Survey 2021 (UK)

Liverpool’s economic balance sheet

There are positives to talk about the Liverpool City Region economy – the growth of the port, rising demand for industrial and logistics space, the successes of the visitor economy and the beginning of a revival in health care sciences. The unemployment rate has fallen from 10% to 4% since 2014 and the number of people holding degree level qualifications is slowly on the rise. Plus, the alarming decline in total population has thankfully been put into reverse. All to the good. But beware the relentless positive spin from those naturally invested in the regeneration game. A cold look at the other side of the balance sheet reveals that Liverpool is still grossly under-performing. The Draft Industrial Strategy published by the office of the Metro Major reveals the City Region is still in need of an economic miracle and sets out the ‘underlying fragility’ of the economy. Liverpool is the fourth most deprived local authority in England, with a life expectancy 6 years lower than the national average. Its employment rate (even pre-pandemic) was also lower than average and the ONS estimates 51,000 of its residents earn below the Real Living Wage. The city of Liverpool ranked 17th for Foreign Direct Investment in 2020 placing it below such economic luminaries as Peterborough and Northampton and only one place above Newport. It’s doubtful if it ranks much better for Domestic Private Investment, though it’s hard to tell for sure as the statistics tend to get unhelpfully rolled into the North West as a whole, likely hiding a multitude of inequalities. The office take-up statistics, a solid measure of the strength of any city’s business activity are miserable. Of the UK’s big nine cities outside of London, Liverpool has the 8th lowest 10-year average (approx. 533,000 sq feet per year) compared to over 2,000,000sqft in Manchester. That’s a crippling 43% below the average take-up across the nine cities. It also commands the lowest rental rates. The building of new stock outside of the recent Paddington Village development is all but non-existent. And that was true long before anybody had heard of Covid. Perhaps most worryingly, Liverpool’s productivity rates which measure the output per worker (Gross Value Added per head) are only 74% of the UK average. Too many of the region’s employment opportunities are focussed on low productivity sectors and Liverpool just doesn’t have anywhere like enough representation in the high-tech industries of tomorrow. As Rafa Benitez, the manager of Liverpool’s two football clubs might say – FACT.

More investment please

What should we conclude from this barrage of data? Liverpool needs more investment like a vampire needs blood. It needs more of everything. More investment from the state, from the private sector, from overseas, from home-grown businesses. It needs more access to venture capital. It needs to diversify, and attack sectors in which it is currently losing out to others, rather than throwing up its hands in defeat and forever banging on about the ones where it is strong now. It needs to step up and compete with its rival regions head-on rather than accepting a subsidiary role. Be better at playing the ‘influence game’. Resource key development and regeneration functions properly with the right level of expertise. Be ambitious and demanding. Fight the right fights for its people. But its leadership won’t do what’s needed as long as it is hooked on the wrong thing – its focus on fairness and the metrics of inequality, not realising they are the symptoms, not the cause of this prolonged failure to attract enough investment, enough ‘stuff’.

Average annual sq ft office take up in the Big Nine Regional Cities (2011-2020)

Source: The Big Nine, Quarterly update of regional office activity

Rationalising low aspiration

Liverpool’s current obsession with morals and good business ethics is at the heart of this misdiagnosis. It is the rationalisation of limited aspirations. Accepting the idea that economic growth is a problem, not a solution and seeing business as something which needs to coached away from its destructive tendencies rather than the source of wealth creation, is forcing the city down a dead-end. What they are left with is a focus on redistribution, because they can’t see the transformative power of growth to improve people’s lives. Fairness, while worthy, becomes about moving the counters around the checkerboard. Fiddling with the rules, but never really changing the game. The leadership has accepted an anti-business, low aspiration narrative because it is misdiagnosing the region’s core problems and its own role in adding to them.

Fairness means accepting defeat

When a moral focus on being a good citizen meets a left wing reflex to identify inequality as the primary social ill and businesses and capitalism as the source of those problems – you end up with a potentially toxic investment agenda that is christened under the name, ‘Fairness’. Instead of understanding that increased investment drives social opportunity, you instead end up fixating on redistribution issues – chasing social justice by achieving a more equitable sharing of the same level of resources that have already proven themselves to be inadequate. As definitions of what is ‘fair’ shift you find yourselves creating a mountain of regulations or informal requirements which make it ever harder for business to act in an entrepreneurial way, particularly prejudicing those small organisations that don’t have the bandwidth to play the game.

But worse – you’ve stopped even trying to grow the cake in any meaningful way, because without realising it, you’ve accepted the limits of low aspiration – your efforts to attract investment become sporadic and half hearted – besides, who wants new jobs when we have a climate emergency on? They’ll only make things worse.

A deep ideological failure lies at the heart of the city region and particularly Liverpool’s sub-par performance. One that sees red lights and limitations everywhere. One that accepts low ambitions as if they were part of the natural order. One that doffs its cap to other cities, for want of imagination about what could be. The kind of ideological blind-spot that leaves our leaders wondering why anyone might want a yacht; that diagnoses symptoms as cause and defaults to lazy moralising about the common good, while wrapping businesses up in ever more unprofitable, energy-sapping restrictions. The city region needs to wake up and kick out the snake-oil salesmen of purpose-driven business from the corridors of power. For a maritime city, it has long since hit the iceberg. It’s time to stop re-arranging the deck chairs. This Titanic needs more lifeboats. And its marinas need more yachts.

Paul Bryan is the Editor and Co-Founder of Liverpolitan. He is also a freelance content writer, script editor, communications strategist and creative coach.

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Where’s our levelling up, Whitehall…?

Liverpolitan Contributor

If you’ve had the good sense to avoid much of the news media over the last year, one of the major political announcements beyond the pandemic has been that of major relocations of the Civil Service from London to the regions.

The so-called ‘levelling up’ agenda is the narrative driving this major change in policy and we’ve been watching keenly ever since to discover how ambitiously and fairly it is being implemented. This is clearly long overdue in a nation that is one of the most politically and economically centralised countries in the western world, and comes 15 years after it was last seriously discussed following the Lyons Review, which largely failed to deliver any meaningful change. Opponents of the idea usually point to the Office for National Statistics move to Newport, which failed to generate much of a boost to its local economy, but I’m not sure what they really expected from relocating such a specific service function to a mid-sized city with little potential to leverage commercial multiplier benefits. Other relocations of civil service jobs and functions have shown limited success due to them effectively being the outsourcing of lower grade roles rather than senior policymakers with real influence. The Government’s own statistics show that over two-thirds of the most senior civil servants remain based in London.

Before we explore this theme further, one of the many impacts of the pandemic has been to change where people want to live and work. This is not to argue that traditional offices, or the town and city centres where they are located, are set for a prolonged demise. Far from it. Offices will continue to thrive as centres for work, but in a repurposed way that maximises a more flexible, collaborative and agile working culture. But increasingly, London does appear to be falling out of favour. Over the last year many thousands of people have escaped the capital for a better quality of life in towns, cities and villages all over the UK. This includes many who have moved back to the Liverpool Metropolitan Region, so it was no surprise to read a recent article in This is Money showing that house price growth in Liverpool over the last 12 months has been the highest of any city in the UK, and more than five times that of London. There are numerous reasons for this, but one significant contributing factor is undoubtedly people escaping the high prices of the capital to return back to where they grew up or attended university. One could describe this as a reversing of the brain-drain effect that all cities have suffered to London over many decades.

Location of Senior Civil Service roles

Source: Moving Out: Making A Success of Civil Service Relocation; IFG Insight November 2020; Institute For Government

There is no doubt that the Liverpool Metropolitan Region has a compelling case for people to relocate to as a great place to live and work. It’s human nature for us to be drawn to water, so the great natural assets we have in the River Mersey, Wirral peninsula and the miles of beaches and sand-dunes on the Sefton coast are a huge draw. Only a little further afield - a mere stones-throw away - lies the mountains and coastlines of North Wales. Then there is the depth of the arts and culture scene and their institutions, quite possibly unmatched in any other city outside London. Liverpool is probably the most architecturally significant regional city, with more listed buildings than any other, and is home to many beautiful parks. It also has a thriving independent food scene and a nightlife that is frequently regarded as the best in the UK. There is good reason why the people who visit Liverpool often come back time and time again. The start of this shift in focus away from the capital is hugely important to our nation and its economic and cultural future.

Back to the levelling up agenda, and it’s worth considering the moves of the BBC. Although not directly controlled by the state, large swathes of the institution have already upped and moved to Manchester/Salford over the last decade to ‘benefit the North’. It now provides jobs and opportunities for more than 3000 people in that city region and has added significant multiplier benefits to its local economy. Currently, the BBC only employs around 30 people in the Liverpool Metropolitan Region, although there is some talk that they might open a small training hub both here and in Hull. This is a matter which I’m sure we’ll come back to in the future. Meanwhile, back in 2018, there was the competition between the major regional cities to secure the new Channel 4 HQ, a selection process which did not give the impression of being particularly fair or transparent. Although the government does not get to tell these organisations where to move, as publicly-owned bodies their decision-making often follows the political theme and thought processes of the day.

The start of this shift in focus away from the capital is hugely important to our nation and its economic and cultural future.

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What department relocations have been announced so far?

In recent months, we have seen news of a new Treasury campus being established in Darlington, albeit with a little nod and wink from Rishi to his Conservative Tees Valley Metro Mayor friend, Ben Houchen. Meanwhile, Leeds was gifted the UK Infrastructure Bank plus a new Bank of England hub, both of which are likely to provide an extremely positive influence on the prosperity of that city and its suburbs. In time, we’ll see how evenly the funds it distributes are spread around the nation. More recently, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) announced increases in its regional headcount, with Birmingham and Salford/Manchester being by far the greatest beneficiaries. The Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government (HCLG) is moving to Wolverhampton. Peterborough will also secure over a thousand new roles from the HM Passport Office and the Department for the Environment.

What does that leave left for the other large cities so far overlooked?

The fear is that the bigger prizes are already gone. Recently, the Leeds-based think tank the Northern Policy Foundation graded all of the major northern urban areas on their overall suitability for large-scale relocations. Liverpool scored rather well. It then went on to suggest suitable locations for departments based on seven grading indexes. Defence in Preston, Education in Lancaster, Crime to Newcastle, Infrastructure in Warrington, and then Liverpool as the most appropriate location for the various Health and NHS Departments. This was partly based on the city having more specialist hospitals than any other outside London, its research-intensive universities (notably the University of Liverpool and School of Tropical Medicine) and one of the largest biopharmaceutical manufacturing clusters in Europe. It’s hard to disagree with any of that. But what else could we have on our ‘levelling up equitably’ list’?

Department of Culture, Media and Sport

Liverpool has a rich history and expertise in both culture and sport. In 2008, the city of Liverpool was awarded the prestigious title of the European Capital of Culture and, according to our local leaders, encouraged by central and regional government to focus on culture and tourism rather than business to drive future prosperity. As unthinkable as that strategy is to most intelligent people, for the Government to not award this department here would be a huge disappointment. And media? This is an area where the Liverpool Metropolitan Region is seriously underserved, but housing that Government function here could provide some counterbalance to the poor treatment the city region and its people have suffered at the hands of regional and national media over many decades. Perception is critical to any region’s prosperity and with better representation we’d hope to see a gradual improvement in the way media institutions depict our region. A more equal playing field would also provide opportunities for our future generations.

Department for Transport

I won’t go into the hugely damaging side-lining of the Liverpool Metropolitan Area by HS2. That will no doubt feature elsewhere. Nor that Liverpool is statistically the poorest connected out of all the core cities by rail. But, over the last 20 years many other regional cities have benefitted from significant amounts of capital expenditure with whole new tram systems, new railway routes and underground lines. Although we have a local rail network in Merseyrail that is the envy of many others, having to wait 10 years for each new (typically small-scale suburban) station seems more like levelling down and does a huge injustice to a network that covers an area of nearly 2 million people. Would such disparity be allowed if the government department responsible for it made its home in the place it has seemingly ignored for so long?

The above are, perhaps the most obvious examples, but there are others that we could make a genuine and compelling case for…

National Cyber Force

It has already been announced that this new function will have a permanent new base in the North West of England in a so-called ‘cyber corridor’. With Manchester already having been gifted a new outpost for GCHQ, including its Accelerator programme, as well as other support to the local business community, surely locating the new National Cyber Force in the Liverpool Metropolitan Region is right to achieve levelling up fairly? We are already home to a thriving tech and start-up scene. Our four universities develop large numbers of quality graduate talent. And with large historical and civil service links to the Ministry of Defence, it would seem entirely logical and equitable.

Advanced Research and Invention Agency (ARIA)

As well as a leading research-intensive university and health and biotech sectors, the Liverpool Metropolitan Region is also a leading player in advanced manufacturing and robotics, and is home to The Hartree Centre, a research facility for the advanced high-performance computing, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI), which is based in Halton. It is well known in university circles that those in London and the South have traditionally secured greater allocations of research funding and investment than those in northern cities. It was at the time of the new Millennium that the Government took the decision to move the Synchrotron Radiation research facility from Daresbury to Oxfordshire, along with £500m of investment that came with it, so maybe now it’s time to correct the mistakes of the past and truly level up…

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What price heritage?

Martin Sloman

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee meets in China this July. One of the items on the agenda is going to be the recommendation to delete Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City from the list of World Heritage Sites.

If Liverpool is deleted from the list, it will be the first UK site ever to suffer this fate and only the second in Europe. It’s a decision the city can could do without at a time when it’s struggling to emerge from the Covid pandemic. No doubt, the decision will attract far more attention in the national media than the original listing ever did. So, how have we got into this situation?

One thing is clear, UNESCO has a point. The inscription of the Liverpool site arose from an agreement to protect the Outstanding Universal Value (OUV) of the property. The development of Liverpool Waters was pursued outside of any planning framework agreed with UNESCO despite their repeated requests. The decision to develop a major football stadium on Bramley Moore Dock has brought matters to a head.

There is a wider issue though and that’s the value of World Heritage Status to a city such as Liverpool, which is always struggling to attract investment and jobs.

There are thirty-two WHS sites in the UK. Nearest to Liverpool are the Castles of Gwynedd, North Wales including those of Conwy, Caernarfon and Beaumaris, which boast some of the finest examples of medieval military defences in Europe. Even though their military function is long gone, it makes complete sense to preserve these buildings and their setting. Today they earn their keep through their popularity with tourists.

Further afield, the City of Bath is a WHS more comparable to Liverpool. The value of Bath lies in its ability to evoke, through its townscape and architecture, the Georgian and Regency eras immortalised in the novels of its most famous resident, Jane Austen. However, unlike the Gwynedd castles, Bath’s famous buildings are still in use, as residences, offices and hotels. Whilst modern Bath may not be as fashionable as in Jane’s day, it remains a relatively prosperous city.

The lesson for Liverpool is surely that heritage and modern usage need to exist side by side. Derelict docks and warehouses do not have the tourist draw of ruined castles; so we need to reimagine these places for the 21st century. Despite all the gloom surrounding World Heritage Status, we must not forget that Liverpool has been quite successful in doing just that.

The Albert Dock – abandoned and derelict in the 1980s - is now one of the country’s major heritage attractions. The combination of museums, shops, bars and restaurants, offices, hotels and private apartments has worked. Purists may not like the cast iron columns painted red but little of heritage value has been lost.

The lesson for Liverpool is surely that heritage and modern usage need to exist side by side.

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Much the same can be said of Stanley Dock. Preserving the gargantuan Tobacco Warehouse was once seen as a hopeless task but the conversion of the building into apartments is now well underway.

Of course, not all our heritage docks are graced by giant warehouses, but Brunswick and Coburg docks now host a marina, Queens Dock has a water sports centre and Salthouse Dock is a haven for canal narrow boats. So new uses can be found for old docks but what is questionable is the heritage value of these new uses.

There’s a classic heritage dilemma surrounding the future use of the Cavendish Cutting, which is just off Tunnel Road in Edge Hill. This, largely forgotten cutting was the scene of the official opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway and the departure point for the first ever trains from Liverpool to Manchester. As such, it is one of the most important relics of the railway age and, deserving of World Heritage status. People have campaigned for its recognition by UNESCO as an extension to the existing World Heritage Site.

One problem lies in the fact that Merseyrail has a long-term proposal to run a passenger rail service through the Wapping Tunnel, which opens into the cutting. The proposal would integrate the City Region’s rail network and vastly improve public transport provision. However, re-opening the cutting to rail services would detract from the Outstanding Universal Value of the site. Or, in other words, re-using a heritage asset for its original purpose removes its heritage value. What would the great British civil engineer and ‘Father of Railways’ George Stephenson have thought?

It can, of course, be argued that any form of development – even remodelling docks for modern shipping – adversely affects the Outstanding Universal Value of a site. If we are to prioritise heritage over modern needs the logical but obsurd conclusion would be to leave the heritage asset in its derelict state and forbid any development. That works for Conwy Castle – but would it work for the vast areas of prime real estate represented by Liverpool’s heritage docks? Even Historic England accepts that this area needs regeneration. However, given the absence of historic warehouses, such as at Stanley and Albert Docks, what is it exactly that they expect?

Historically, Liverpool’s dockside buildings have varied in scale from single storey transit sheds to the Stanley and Waterloo Dock warehouses and the long gone but imposing Clarence Dock Power Station. Consequently, there can be no definitive template for future development of the area.

One cue might be taken from the docks themselves – often hundreds of metres in length. Would they be dwarfed by even a 200m high tower?

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The debate between the heritage and development lobbies has become very polarized but, if there is one area of agreement it’s surely that whatever is built within the World Heritage Site should be of outstanding architectural quality. However, if we’re realistic, quality of design and materials cannot be divorced from the financial return that the developer requires to make a project viable, which will be more difficult to achieve where the scale of development is constrained.

Obtaining agreement on what is ‘appropriate’ development on a site such as Central Docks is not an easy process. It involves input from different interests and requires an ability to compromise on all sides.

We have been led to believe that the final nail in the coffin of the World Heritage Site has been the decision to grant planning permission for Everton’s stadium on Bramley Moore Dock. Bramley Moore is the northernmost and largest of the docks within the WHS and forms part of a complex of five docks that were state of the art when opened in the 1840s. It is only natural that UNESCO would take a dim view about its infilling.

Yet there are other considerations. Bramley Moore is outside of the World Heritage Site- in the ‘buffer zone’. It screens the WHS from a large wastewater treatment plant on its northern side. The Everton plan is not a bog-standard football stadium but consists of an elegant, curved roof topping a brick sub-structure designed to emulate traditional dock-side warehouses.  The original dock walls are to be preserved and a channel retaining the link with the Northern Docks is to be retained. The existing hydraulic tower will be refurbished and incorporated into the stadium setting.  Everton describe this scheme as a ‘heritage project’ and that is hard to deny.

In fact, Bramley Moore stadium could be said to define the northern limit of the Central Docks in much the same way as the Three Graces indicate their southern limit. As has been often pointed out, the Three Graces were themselves built on an infilled dock.

So, is Bramley Moore dock the deal-breaker? Are UNESCO unable to compromise to allow such an important regeneration project? After all, one of Britain’s most famous World Heritage Sites, the Tower of London does not seem too bothered by ‘buffer zones’.

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Buffer Zones in action: The Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula at the Tower of London WHS – burial place of Henry VIII’s wives – yet overshadowed by the infamous ‘Walkie Talkie’.

Maybe if Liverpool – Maritime Mercantile City is to have a future, it will depend on constructive dialogue between heritage bodies, developers and Liverpool City Council.

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Turning the lights back on

Glyn Mon Hughes

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When Covid first struck, nobody could have predicted the catastrophe it would inflict on the cultural sector worldwide.

What was thought to have been little more than a rather large blip similar to the annual appearance of a new strain of influenza turned into something way more serious, closing down massive sectors of the economy and driving many to the brink of oblivion. For the cultural sector, the outlook was dire. Museums, galleries, libraries, theatres, concert halls, music venues and leisure centres all closed. The Creative Industries Federation cited research that more than 400,000 UK jobs could be lost in 2020, with the nation’s creative industries losing £1.5bn a week in revenue.

However, as signs of conquering Covid become bit by bit more evident, the culture industry is slowly reopening in Liverpool and its environs. But how different will it be?

Liverpool, after all, is an internationally recognised ‘brand’ and many of its cultural offerings are globally recognised. Names such as Tate Liverpool, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, The Beatles, the Walker Art Gallery and dozens more are up there with cultural icons from cities on five continents. Things will, no doubt, change particularly when most restrictions are eased from 19 July. One of the many questions which remains unanswered, though, is whether people will come back to venues in the numbers who attended before March last year.

In March this year, a five-year plan was revealed to help rebuild the sector. The grandly named Liverpool City Region Cultural Compact Strategic Action Plan says it ‘recognises the key role that arts and culture play in the city’s economy and in supporting health and wellbeing as the City Region emerges from the pandemic’. It talked about the ability of recognising the evidence of the impact of the crisis, seen in the closure of venues and 3,500 redundancies in the first six months of the crisis. It added that ‘closure of music, entertainment and performing arts venues had a catastrophic effect on other parts of the supply chain, including production services, catering and travel companies, whose social and economic impact is immense’.

So, where next?

Prior to the pandemic, according to Culture Liverpool 57,000 people worked in the City Region’s cultural sector (or in associated jobs) – double the number estimated by the Office for National Statistics. Many of these jobs are unseen by both residents and visitors. They are the people who curate exhibitions in art galleries, who write the descriptive information on museum exhibits, who light the theatre, who collate and put out the music for orchestral musicians, who run the publicity machines to get people to the venues in the first place. That’s before all those who serve in theatre bars, museum coffee shops, art gallery shops and all the other support staff.

But many of those jobs have gone. Getting them back may be more of an uphill struggle than many realise.

The five-year plan has put three key strategies into place to ease the way along the path to recovery. Creative Communities will champion community-led transformation and develop assets within communities across the City Region. Creative People will support and facilitate artist-, practitioner- and community-led cultural and creative interventions with the City Region cultural programmes, while Creative Place will prioritise the influence and role of arts and culture and regeneration of the City Region.

The seriousness of the situation was revealed when National Museums Liverpool set up an appeal in order to avoid losing jobs. Donations from the public dropped 95%, since all seven venues attracted 200,000 visitors in 2020. The normal footfall tops 3m.

“We usually get £400,000 a year through donation boxes so you can see how devastating that is,” said Head of Development Rowena Dean. Towards the end of the year, around 100 jobs came under threat as the Museums’ total income fell by about £5.9m. There was funding from Government but that does not cover everything, with Dean revealing that, for every £1 which comes in grants, 45p needs to be raised locally – from shops, cafes and donations. “Even while we have not had visitors in the building, the work still goes on. We’ve still been feeding the fish, caring for the collections, planning exhibitions, looking after those buildings. So a huge amount has been going on.”

Theatres and music venues have been closed and, now that many may reopen again, audiences must be socially distanced. That means a concert by the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra can be attended by 300 people in the hall – which is about a sixth of the venue’s capacity. Liverpool Cathedral can accommodate only 200 in the vast central space – whether for a service or for a performance of some kind.

The Philharmonic, however, attracted national media attention for its innovative online offer. Concert-goers who could not attend the live event could pay £10 and watch a recording of the event as many times as they wished within 30 days. That helped the venue recoup some of the millions it lost in non-existent box office revenue - £2.5m, as reported in the Daily Telegraph in June 2020. That figure has surely rocketed since then. Social distancing not only restricts audience numbers but also the amount of musicians allowed on stage – a maximum of 35 at present.

Any choir – unless professional – cannot perform at present, so large organisations such as the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Choir or the Liverpool Welsh Choral are silenced. That has led members from the thousands of other choral outfits nationwide to take to a frantic social media debate asking why singing is seen as highly dangerous, yet shouting or cheering at a sports event is perfectly acceptable. In all, something like 2m singers have been silenced nationwide since March 2020 as rehearsals and performances for all but a very limited group are banned.

The seriousness of the situation was revealed when National Museums Liverpool set up an appeal in order to avoid losing jobs. Donations from the public dropped 95%…

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According to a worried yet optimistic chief executive of the Phil, speaking to the Daily Telegraph a year ago, there are fears for the future. “The hope is that we come through this not only successfully, but strengthened,” said Michael Eakin, “because one of the things that gives me hope is that I can see that people can see the value of this when it’s not around.”

Liverpool’s music scene is, of course, far more than the Philharmonic. The M&S Bank Arena has seen its programmes decimated as have places such as the O2 Academy and the various Liverpool venues it manages, such as the Guild of Students or the Arts Club. The myriad other venues which make up what could be described as Liverpool’s gig economy have had to rein their respective programmes which means that it is not only large theatres with labour-intensive touring productions which have been affected but also everything else, right down to the folk duo playing in a street-corner pub who have seen their livelihoods virtually terminated.

The same goes for theatres and cinemas. The Playhouse can admit 150 patrons – normally 680 – while the Everyman sells 72 seats for each performance, instead of 405. Groups of cinemagoers must keep apart which, in turn, affects revenue. How all this will change after 19 July remains to be seen and plans so far appear sketchy.

Even outdoor events, such as the giant artworks planted around the city, part of Liverpool Biennial – the UK’s largest festival of contemporary art – came a cropper. Thousands of people turned up to see the installations which immediately attracted criticism because of a lack of social distancing. These were, of course, people venturing out for some sort of entertainment often for the first time in months, so they could hardly be blamed.

All is far from lost, though, and there are positive signs for the future. The Shakespeare North Playhouse opens in Prescot in summer 2022. The new 400-seat Tung Auditorium, in the Yoko Ono Lennon Centre on Grove Street, opens later this year and will become the home of the Philharmonic’s contemporary music outfit, Ensemble 10/10. The Liverpool Theatre Festival will go ahead in September. A new chamber music festival has been set up in Wirral, and takes place this month. Add those – and many other events – into an incredibly vibrant cultural offering, and it is possible to take some comfort from the herculanean efforts made to keep the arts afloat.

Independent research commissioned by the Visitor Economy Team at Liverpool City Region Local Enterprise Partnership in 2018 showed that 67.3m people visited the region – 61m just for the day, and 5.5m as staying visitors. The economic value of the visitor economy had grown 5% per year for five years and stood at just under £5bn pumped into the local economy. Somewhat ominously, Peter Sandman, Head of Visitor Economy for the LEP spoke of underlying concerns which could hamper growth in the next five years. “In 2018, Liverpool slipped from fifth to sixth place in terms of popularity with overseas visitors,” he said. “Similarly, the reliance on domestic markets to sustain this level of performance while the implications on border controls as the UK leaves the EU for key inbound markets may also affect performance.”

That view must, surely, be radically different now. Quite how the City Region rebuilds its cultural offer remains to be seen. Tentative steps are being made on the footpath back to normality for the formidable culture offering in Liverpool City Region. But how are we going to countenance the new normal?

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