Out Now: ’5 Days in May: The Coalition and Beyond’

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‘Is a deal still possible?’ Nick Robinson texted me at 3.26 a.m. on election night.

‘Everything looks possible,’ I texted back.

One of the great dramas of modern British politics unfolded in the wake of the inconclusive 2010 general election. This is the first account from Gordon Brown’s Downing Street of those five days of fraught negotiation. Written in the heat of battle by a key Labour insider, it captures the electric excitement as events took their course, and reflects on the nature of coalition government and what lies ahead.

At the heart of the Blair and Brown governments for twelve years, Andrew Adonis was a member of the Labour team engaged in the coalition negotiations that followed the general election of 2010. In 1998 he joined the No. 10 Policy Unit before entering the House of Lords in 2005 and becoming Minister for Schools until 2008. This decade of pioneering education reform – in particular the creation of the academies programme – is the subject of his previous book Education, Education, Education, also published by Biteback. Under Gordon Brown, he moved to the Department for Transport, first as Railways Minister, then as Secretary of State. Before joining government, Andrew Adonis was a journalist on the Financial Times and The Observer. He was previously a Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford, where he gained his PhD. His previous books include studies of Parliament, the English class system and the rise and fall of the poll tax.

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Frontline gets go ahead to change lives through children’s social work

A new organisation, with the specific aim of boosting the image of social work and getting the very best people into the profession, today received the Government’s green light to start recruiting candidates for one of Britain’s toughest jobs from this September.

Frontline, which has received cross-party support, will attract, recruit and develop high potential individuals to be leaders in children’s social work and broader society.  Frontline is a work-based route into children’s social work that aims to attract people that might not have considered a career in the profession before.

Through an innovative two year programme, high potential graduates and career switchers will be given excellent academic and on-the-job experience to develop them into outstanding social workers and ultimately transform the lives of vulnerable children.

Today’s announcement from the Department of Education means that Frontline will begin recruiting candidates from this September so that the first cohort can start working in local authorities in Greater Manchester and Greater London from summer 2014.

The Frontline programme will last two years and be structured as:

An intensive five-week residential summer institute;

The first 12 months as intensive on-the-job training and education with full time supervision from an experienced social worker;

At the end of the first year participants will be qualified to practice and then undertake a second year as a newly qualified social worker.

Participants will be paid over these two years and will be based with the same local authority.  At the end of the programme they will be awarded a Masters degree.  The Frontline proposals have been in development for 18 months, in consultation with employers, academics and professional bodies.

As an independent organisation, Frontline will be able to focus on recruiting and developing people to become outstanding social workers. Frontline is supported and incubated in its development phase by ARK, the international children’s charity, so that it can become a successful independent organisation. Frontline will also be attracting support from corporate and private sector supporters so that it can have maximum impact.

Josh MacAlister, Chief Executive of Frontline, said:

“Today’s announcement will allow Frontline to make a bold offer to the best and the brightest: make a difference and develop as a leader in one of Britain’s toughest jobs. We are delighted to receive cross party support for the launch of a new organisation that will be totally dedicated to transforming life chances for the most vulnerable children.  Social work should be one of the most attractive and prestigious career choices which offers the very best training. Today’s announcement will help us start this work.”

Lord Andrew Adonis, Chair of the Frontline board, said:

“I know first-hand the importance of having a great social worker. There is an urgent need to transform life chances for abused and neglected children and Frontline will play a vital part in addressing this national challenge. In ten short years Teach First has helped make teaching one of the top career choices in the country. Frontline can now do the same for social work.”

Frontline’s mission is to “Transform life chances of vulnerable children by recruiting and developing outstanding individuals to be leaders in social work and broader society.” The programme has achieved cross-party and employer support:

Michael Gove MP, Secretary of State for Education, said:

“Good social workers literally save lives; the bad can leave them in ruins. I am delighted that Isabelle Trowler has agreed to lead our reform programme; to challenge as well as to champion the profession so that vulnerable children and families are better protected.

“I am also very pleased to announce our support for Frontline, an exciting proposal and a real challenge for the brightest applicants who will have the privilege and satisfaction of helping to improve the lives of the most vulnerable children in the country.”

David Laws MP, Minister of State for Schools, said:

“Quite simply, great social work is about changing children’s lives. Being a social worker is often hugely tough and challenging, but it can also be hugely rewarding for those who want to make a difference for the most vulnerable families and young people. Frontline is a fantastic initiative and I strongly support their mission to get the very best graduates into the social work profession.”

Stephen Twigg MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Education, said:

“Frontline is an exciting opportunity that could play a major role in reforming children’s social work. Getting great people into one of Britain’s toughest jobs to lead change with children and families is one of our top priorities for transforming the life changes for some of society’s most vulnerable. Frontline has my full support.”

Dave Hill, Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said:

“ADCS welcomes the potential contribution that Frontline can make to the education and training of social workers. We would want to support the development of the programme and will continue to work with Frontline to shape and support the work, ensuring that the long term impact of Frontline is a positive one that adds to the overall development of social work education by ensuring it provides sufficient breadth of experience and knowledge and adheres to current regulations and good practice.”

Chief Executive Josh MacAlister had the original idea for Frontline based on his experiences on the Teach First programme. He completed the report with the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

Frontline is supported in its development phase by ARK, the international children’s charity which runs education, health and children’s welfare programmes in the UK and overseas.

The Frontline programme will begin with a first cohort of 100 participants based in Greater London and Greater Manchester. Participants will work in local authority child protection teams.  In the first year they will co-work cases with an experienced social worker before they qualify and take on their own caseload.

For more information, please contact Matthew Doyle on 07976 424 172 or visit www.thefrontline.org.uk

This morning the consultation on Crossrail 2 was launched at Wimbledon Station.
Here’s the TfL press release:

Consultation opens on proposed routes for Crossrail 2

• Crossrail 2 would create a new high frequency, high capacity rail line with shorter journey times between south west and north east London
• Proposed routes would help relieve congestion and provide a catalyst for new jobs and homes

With London’s population set to boom, plans are underway for a vital new rail line, Crossrail 2, in order to support this future growth. Today the plans moved a step closer with Transport for London (TfL) and Network Rail launching a public consultation on the proposed routes.

With Crossrail already set to provide a 10 per cent increase to rail capacity in London, Crossrail 2 would add to this even further. It would create a new high frequency, high capacity rail line with shorter journey times between south west and north east London. It would help to relieve congestion on busy main line routes into central London and on the Underground network, while allowing communities around London to benefit from the creation of new jobs and new homes.

The Mayor of London, Boris Johnson said: “Crossrail is set to revolutionise travel in the capital, and with a predicted 10 million people expected to be living in London by 2031, pressing ahead with the next stage of the plan, Crossrail 2, is quite simply essential. In order to support this great capital’s bright future, we need to think ahead and not wait until our transport arteries are clogged up and restricting jobs and growth. That’s why I am sending out a rallying cry for the public’s support for this consultation – come and share your views so we can progress with Crossrail 2 as soon as possible.”

The consultation will seek the views of people in London and the south east of England and will run from 14 May to 2 August 2013. It aims to establish what level of support there is for the project and where the public and stakeholders would like Crossrail 2 to serve. The public are encouraged to respond and share their views at www.crossrail2.co.uk

Even with the Tube upgrade works and the delivery of Crossrail additional capacity on the transport network is needed to cope with London’s forecasted population growth. Crossrail 2 could be operational in 2030 but it is essential that work continues now to meet this target so the future forecasted population and employment growth in London is supported by new transport infrastructure.

A route for Crossrail 2, formerly known as the Chelsea-Hackney Line, has been kept free from any intrusive building development since 1991 and any new buildings along the route have been constructed to allow for a potential new railway line. TfL is now reviewing this safeguarded route and has proposed two alternatives which would better meet the rail needs of the capital in the future – a Metro option and a Regional option.

The Metro option could offer a high frequency underground service across central London. This option could be an underground railway and could operate between Wimbledon and Alexandra Palace. The route would relieve congestion on trains and platforms on the Northern, Piccadilly and Victoria lines.

The Regional option could benefit people in Hertfordshire, Surrey and beyond by enabling more trains to run on busy National Rail routes. This route could be a combined underground and overground railway and could operate from Alexandra Palace and stations in Hertfordshire to various locations in south west London and Surrey.

Transport for London’s Commissioner, Sir Peter Hendy CBE said: “It is vital for the UK economy that we get on and finish Crossrail and the upgrade of the Tube. It is equally important for us to look beyond that if we are to accommodate a population forecast to grow to 10 million by the early 2030s. Given the lead times needed, that means progressing with Crossrail 2 now as an essential element in maintaining London’s status as a world city.”

David Higgins, Network Rail Chief Executive, said: “London’s railways are already the busiest and most congested in the country, with many main lines already operating at, or close to, capacity. With the number of rail passengers in London predicted to grow by 30 per cent in the next twenty years, our plans to increase capacity through projects like Thameslink and Crossrail will make a real difference. But we must also press on with schemes such as Crossrail 2 to make sure public transport continues to support and drive economic growth in and around the capital.”

Lord Adonis, Chairman of the Crossrail 2 Task Force for London First, said: “Even with the significant investment already taking place in transport infrastructure, Crossrail 2 will be as essential as Crossrail for London to provide jobs and prosperity in the next generation. I am glad to see the Mayor taking forward preparations for Crossrail 2. Now we need a credible funding plan embracing the public and private sectors, with a view to construction in the 2020s.”

Baroness Jo Valentine, Chief Executive of London First said:  “We welcome the start of the consultation process for Crossrail 2 today which is a key piece of infrastructure needed for London.  Even with the major transport programmes that are already planned or underway, by the late 2020s most tube and train carriages will feel like sardine tins for much of the day. That’s bad for London of course, but as the capital is the engine room of the UK economy, it would be damaging to the country as a whole. We need everyone to get behind this project and make it happen.”

A report on the findings of this consultation will be presented to the Mayor of London in autumn this year and made publicly available on the consultation website. Further, more detailed consultations would then follow.

Ends

Notes to editors:

• A flythrough of the proposed routes is available here: http://youtu.be/uKoUqjeBT0Q Please note a broadcast quality version is available upon request
• Images of the routes we are consulting on are available at: www.flickr.com/tflpress
• Further information on the Crossrail 2 consultation can be found at www.crossrail2.co.uk
• In February London First produced a final report on their Crossrail 2 Task Force which is available here: http://londonfirst.co.uk/london-first-recommends-new-crossrail-2-route/

From The Telegraph on 10 May 2013.

A sharp rise in fees in recent years has left the independent education system so exclusive that children fail to mix with peers “who don’t have parents of substantial means”, said Lord Adonis.

This article first appeared on Progress Online on 8 May 2013 and is based on the final chapters of ’5 Days in May: The Coalition and Beyond’ which can be bought at the special price of £10 by visiting www.politicos.co.uk/promotions and entering the code: PROGRESS.

Few short periods in politics have mattered more in Britain than the ‘five days in May’ which followed the 2010 general election. Secret meetings day and night; helicopters whirring overhead; television cameras swarming back and forth across Westminster and Whitehall. It was West Wing, Borgen, the lot: a raw battle for power to decide who would govern and which big policies would win or lose. How does it look in hindsight, three years on?

Reflecting back, it is striking that a fair proportion of the Labour cabinet were resigned to losing the election and handing power to David Cameron. Gordon Brown never gave up. Had he resigned the Labour leadership immediately on the Friday morning, and announced that he intended to take no role in a Labour-Liberal Democrat government apart from negotiating its birth, it might have been harder for Nick Clegg to lead the Liberal Democrats into coalition with the Tories. It would have blunted  Cameron’s ‘big, open and comprehensive’ offer to the Liberal Democrats, which instead became the key power play immediately after the election. It would also have removed one ostensible reason Clegg gave for favouring the Tories – namely, Brown’s continuation.

No one suggested that the former prime minister do this, which reflects a deeper problem. In May 2010 Labour was exhausted, demoralised, almost leaderless. Thirteen years in government had drained many MPs and ministers dry. Labour should have fought with every sinew in 2010 to retain power. To give up power voluntarily, because you are tired of government and it is all too difficult, is a betrayal of the people you serve.

It was claimed at the time, and has since become conventional wisdom, that ‘the numbers didn’t add up’ for a Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition. In truth, the numbers were there, provided the Liberal Democrats went left rather than right and Labour was disciplined. The key numbers were these: Labour combined with the Liberal Democrats had 315 seats; the Tories held 307; and other parties – almost all of them far more anti-Tory than anti-Labour – had 28. A Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition would have had a majority of about 30. The closest approach to such a coalition vote in the present parliament, when the Liberal Democrats voted with Labour this January to delay the redrawing of parliamentary boundaries, saw the Conservatives lose by 334 to 292, a majority of 42.

What of the future? I used to think coalition government was preferable to single-party government. But I have changed my mind in light of experience over the last 30 years. The last three years have shown that is possible to make coalitions work in modern Britain. But they have also convinced me that, for progressives, coalition is not superior to single-party majority government.

For a progressive social democrat, coalition between parties of the centre-left and the centre is superficially attractive. Believers in a social market economy and an open, liberal society are spread across all three major parties, particularly Labour and the Liberal Democrats. Coalitions might therefore promote consensus behind mainstream social market policies, and make governments stronger and better. This view was popular in the 1970s and 1980s, when I was coming of political age, because of the extremist drift of both the Labour and the Conservative parties and the formation of the Social Democratic party, intended by one of its founding members, Roy Jenkins, to strengthen what he called the ‘radical centre’. Reflecting the depth of divisions within Labour and the Conservatives at the time, Jenkins argued that ‘big tent’ parties of left and right ‘make the moderates too much the prisoner of the extremists’. He ended one speech with Yeats’ lament: ‘The best lack all conviction, while the worst / Are full of passionate intensity.’

However, the SDP-Liberal Alliance failed to make an electoral breakthrough in 1983 and the concept of a ‘centre party’ proved problematic, as the Liberal Democrats are still demonstrating. The spectrum of views, even among the party’s MPs, ranges from the left of the Labour party to the right of the Conservative party, with plenty in each camp, as witnessed by the debate on The Orange Book since 2004.

Furthermore, the extremist drift of the Labour party turned out to be a passing phase. By the advent of the Blair government, Labour’s extremists had become the prisoner of the moderates, not the other way around. So much so that  Jenkins himself became a close confidant and adviser to Tony Blair while the Liberal Democrats remained on the opposition benches after New Labour’s landslide in 1997. To paraphrase Yeats, it was the best, not the worst, who acquired all conviction and passionate intensity. (Ironically, Jenkins came to fear that  Blair possessed rather too much of both by the time of the Iraq invasion).

In reality, the best way to advance mainstream progressive politics is to organise, lead and win from inside the major parties. It is a chimera to regard coalition as a means of securing ‘external’ victory after ‘internal’ defeat. So Labour needs to win outright as a broad-based progressive party, informed by the best thinking in other parties and beyond, but not reliant on coalition with other parties to assemble a majority in the Commons. This is the challenge for One Nation Labour.

The Conservatives did not win in 2010. They secured a smaller proportion of seats than any ‘winning’ party since Ramsay MacDonald’s Labour party in the hung parliament of 1929. This was not just the product of the electoral system. At 36.1 per cent, the Tory vote in 2010 was the lowest for a ‘winning’ party since Britain became a recognisable democracy in 1918, with one important exception: Labour in 2005, at 35.2 per cent.

The root of the Tory problem is that they are no longer a national party. For a generation now, they have barely existed in Scotland and in most of the conurbations of the Midlands and the north. They clearly have big problems. But Labour’s are equally big in southern England. In 2010, out of 218 seats south of Birmingham excluding London, Labour won only 10. In the 25 counties of southern England, Labour won no seats at all in 19.

In 2010, Labour’s national share of the vote fell to 29 per cent.  Blair won in 1997 with 43.2 per cent and with 40.7 per cent in 2001. So Labour lost about a third of its support over the following decade. The necessity for Labour to become a party of southern England becomes still greater when the parliamentary boundaries are finally redrawn for the election after 2015, and the balance of seats shifts decisively south.

Ed Miliband is therefore right to advance One Nation Labour. It not only seizes the ‘One Nation’ mantle from the Conservatives at the point where their credibility as a One Nation party is shot through. It also concentrates Labour’s mind on the imperative to become, as in the early Blair years, a One Nation party in social appeal and geographical reach. This requires Labour’s philosophy and programme to be avowedly national, not sectarian.

One Nation Labour is a party of aspiration, enterprise and responsibility as well as social justice. It is proudly liberal as well as Labour. It is the party of modernisation not the status quo; of responsibility – personal responsibility, social responsibility, economic responsibility – as well as equality, rights and freedoms.

One Nation Labour speaks the language of middle England – middle class and working class – which wants to see more and better jobs, more choice and higher standards in the public services, more and better opportunities for their children to get on, greater responsibility as well as rights in welfare and criminal justice, and which also wants greater security, both physical security in their neighbourhoods and greater security in facing the challenges of modern life.

One Nation Labour does not mean recycling New Labour policies in an unthinking way. Some, like the quest for greater choice and higher standards in education and health, are still appropriate. Others, particularly Labour’s approach to financial regulation, growth, infrastructure, welfare and devolution within England – need to change radically in the light of new circumstances and challenges.

Labour’s 1945 manifesto – written amid the break-up of Winston Churchill’s great wartime coalition – seized the One Nation modernisation theme under the inspired title ‘Let us face the future’. Its final chapter was entitled ‘Labour’s call to all progressives’, and it warned: ‘It is very easy to set out a list of aims. What matters is whether it is backed up by a genuine workmanlike plan conceived without regard to sectional vested interests and carried through.’

That is our challenge in the run-up to 2015. To set out not just a list of aims – one nation, responsible capitalism, more and better jobs – but a genuine workmanlike plan conceived without regard to sectional interests and carried through.

“David Cameron should make each of his ministers read this book – (remember Keith Joseph’s reading lists?) – because in Chapter 12 Adonis offers some very good tips on how to be a successful reformer. He demonstrates how a great vision can be delivered.”
Kenneth Baker in the Telegraph

“Education, Education, Education: Reforming England’s Schools, is a must-read for anyone interested in education or how to drive through public service reform.”
Jacqui Smith for Progress Online

“Buy the book. Buy it for your mother. Buy it for everyone you know. It is such a clear analysis of what went wrong with British schools and how to put it right.”
John Rentoul in the Independent

“[Education, Education, Education] is an exhilaratingly unapologetic, well-sourced, highly readable and generally persuasive account of why the late-20th century English schools system had to be reinvented, has largely been reinvented, but still needs to be reinvented further. Read it.”
Martin Kettle in the Guardian

“Education, Education, Education should be read by every MP and MSP. It’s probably the most important political book of the year. I know suggesting Scotland might have anything to learn from how they organise matters in England offends “civic Scotland’s” unearned sense of superiority, but, nevertheless, the fact remains that English educational reform offers a way forward for Scotland too.”
Alex Massie in the Scotsman

“To observe Andrew Adonis as minister of schools between 2005 and 2008 was to witness a man on fire. “Who you need to speak to is X, Y and Z,” I can hear him hammering out with boyish enthusiasm, surrounded by officials and aides awaiting his next instruction. In his new book he writes of the need for radical ministers to “micro-manage constantly”’: he certainly personified that advice. It helps explain why he became the most powerful education minister in the past 100 years never to become education secretary – and indeed more influential than many who reached that summit… This is a deftly diplomatic book, which manages to be positive about everybody, a reflection of the personal skills and manners that allowed him to achieve so much.”
Anthony Seldon in the New Statesman

“Even residual critics of Lord Adonis… must quail at the failure he outlines in Education, Education, Education. With the typical 16 year-old in the Nineties leaving school with two or three GCSEs that probably did not include English and Maths, Lord Adonis set himself the task of achieving a “90 per cent education system”, under which at least nine in 10 pupils achieved a basic standard.”
Mary Riddell in the Telegraph

“The name of Adonis will go down in the history of education in England as one of the most reforming and far-reaching ever – right up there with Forster, Balfour, Butler and Boyle; names which have become synonymous over the years with their respective legislative acts… He writes the way he reformed: it is no-nonsense prose; direct, passionate and compelling.”
Adrian Hilton in the Daily Mail

“Adonis grasped the nettle. It was no good tinkering with the system or throwing money at it. It needed to be fundamentally re-thought.”
Tony Rennell in the Daily Mail

“As a prospectus for the reform of secondary education it is difficult to fault Education, Education, Education. Moreover, as a reminder of just how difficult it is change the course of the ship of the British state for anyone other than the most determined and committed of reformers, it is a significant contribution much beyond the education field…
Education, education, education is a brilliant vision for education and can’t be recommended highly enough. Adonis’s achievements are considerable. The passion and intelligence of this contribution shines a light on the embarrassing state of the debate in a political environment. There is a deep moral urgency that second best is not good enough for anyone. Hopefully, Adonis or someone similar can apply this creativity beyond the schools sector alone. It is of national importance.”
Anthony Painter for Labour Uncut

“The book is compellingly written – before he worked in Number 10, Adonis was a gifted journalist – but it is also a political manifesto for further radical education reform…  This is an important book, and a powerful reminder that between the forces of marketised deregulation and statist management there is indeed a third way of educational transformation and improvement.”
Chris Husbands in the TES

This review first appeared in the New Statesman of 26 April 2013.

Because Sir Edward Grey was such a nice man, historians have followed contemporaries in excusing the fact that he was such a disastrous minister: arguably the most incompetent Foreign Secretary of all time for his responsibility in taking Britain into the First World War, having failed in July 1914 to do all within his power to stop the conflagration.

Grey was not solely to blame. The then prime minister, Herbert Asquith, delegated foreign policy and barely engaged in the escalating crisis until its final days.  We cannot know what would have happened had British policy been more effective.  Probably it was within the power of Asquith and Grey to have kept Britain out of the war.  Possibly they could have prevented it entirely, dissuading Germany from supporting Austria in the chain reaction which led from Archduke Franz Ferdinand’s assassination in Sarajevo on 28 June to the German invasion of Belgium on 4 August.

However, since virtually any alternative would have been better than what followed from the calamity of July and August 1914 – namely, a European Thirty Years’ War, complete with communism, fascism, genocide, the Holocaust, slavery and the partition and subjugation of eastern Europe for a further half century – they deserve little benefit of the doubt.

Our grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations, who suffered so much, had to believe that the mass slaughter of Ypres, the Somme and the Dardanelles was not in vain and that German militarism made world war unavoidable.  It was too painful to believe otherwise. Grey’s aristocratic integrity and universal pleasantness were therefore sufficient proof of his high capacity and intentions.

Alas, Michael Waterhouse simply rubber stamps this conventional wisdom.  His biography is a good portrait of Grey the man – his fishing and love of the countryside, his conservative liberalism, his affairs and family – but it barely analyses his conduct of foreign policy.  Waterhouse’s only judgment on Grey the Foreign Secretary from 1905 until 1916 is this sentence: “During the decade before the outbreak of war he prepared his country for what many saw as the inevitable conflict and, although exhausted and half blind, he was the only European statesman who fought hard for peace during the July crisis.”

If exhausted and half blind, should he have been in the job?  And why does Waterhouse not criticise Grey’s profound ignorance of “abroad”?  Grey took more than eight years as foreign secretary to make his first overseas visit, and he didn’t even want to make that one (George V’s state visit to Paris in April 1914).  He never visited Germany.

In the July crisis, he may have desired peace, yet his policy produced the opposite result.  So how far was he to blame? Waterhouse does not address this question, beyond noting that Grey’s stark irresolution throughout July 1914 on the basic issue of whether or not Britain would support France in resisting a German invasion – which had the fatal effect of encouraging both German and Austrian militarism and French and Russian resistance – was partly due to a “split Cabinet.”

However, the point is that Grey did not seek to lead the Cabinet because he was himself weak and irresolute.  Only on the eve of the German invasion did Grey come off the fence and seek a cabinet pledge to uphold the security of Belgium and France.  Yet at that point, the best policy for Britain – and ultimately for Europe – was probably to keep out of the war and secure the Channel, as it had done in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.

The most informative commentary on July 1914 lies in Asquith’s letters to his 27-year-old lover Venetia Stanley. As late as 24 July, at the end of a letter mostly about the Ulster crisis, Asquith simply notes: “Happily there seems to be no reason why we should be anything more than spectators [in any European conflict].”

Four days later, he was still writing in this distant vein, even drawing comfort from the prospect that the European situation might have the effect “of throwing into the background the lurid pictures of civil war in Ulster.” On 29 July, Asquith concluded a meeting of the cabinet with the decision that, on the critical issue of any German violation of Belgian neutrality, “Sir E Grey should be authorised to inform the German and French ambassadors that at this stage we were unable to pledge ourselves in advance, either under all conditions to stand aside or on any conditions to join in.” This one sentence contains the most damning indictment of Asquith and Grey’s leadership and policy. It is evident that Asquith did not appreciate the magnitude of the European crisis until 1 August, three days before the German invasion of Belgium. Until the day before, he had been planning to attend a weekend house party with Stanley in Anglesey. Grey was also at his country house for weekends in July.

A miscalculation of British intentions on the part of the other European powers was critical to the outbreak of war.  This happened for one overriding, simple reason: because Britain’s intentions were unclear. The responsibility for this lay above all with Grey.  And Grey was equally critical to the decision to join the war, which was only taken in the last 48 hours before the German invasion of Belgium.

The First World War eviscerated Europe for a generation and more. As the armies marched, Grey remarked that the lamps were going out all over Europe.  Asquith wrote to Stanley deploring the cheering crowds outside Buckingham Palace.  “How one loathes such levity,” he added.  There was indeed nothing to cheer, but it was a month of political and diplomatic levity by Grey and Asquith which had led to the war and Britain’s fateful participation.

Our challenges are that, despite this, we don’t have enough innovative companies offering enough good jobs; our education and skills base is too weak; we don’t make enough of our natural resources; our rural, cultural and tourist assets are amongst the best kept lights under the bushel; in transport connections, the North East is too isolated within the UK and internationally and too poorly joined up internally; and that the North East does not project a strong enough identity nationally and internationally, and is not a strong enough magnet for talent, trade and tourism.

However, setting these challenges against the huge assets of the North East, I am profoundly optimistic. With leadership, innovation and investment, an economic renaissance is possible. Progress in some areas depends on national government, which needs to focus more on infrastructure, innovation, and decentralisation to strong regional institutions. But there is plenty of energy and capacity in the north-east to create more and better jobs – the 60,000 extra private sector jobs highlighted by the review – if the region’s strengths are fully mobilised.

A big issue is what I call “leadership with a plan”, without which nothing ever gets done. We have excellent business, political and voluntary sector leaders in the North East, but we need the sum to be more than the parts. For that to happen we need stronger institutions and a bold manifesto for change.

This is why my review strongly welcomes the inspired decision by the leaders of the seven local authorities in the North East Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) region, and all three political parties that lead them, to establish a Combined Authority with the LEP and wider business community in support.

The review makes three key recommendations about the Combined Authority. First, the aim should be to launch the Combined Authority on 1 April 2014 – the same date as the Sheffield and Leeds city regions are proposing to set up equivalents. This requires the seven local authorities to maintain the momentum they have created; it also requires government support, to provide the legal instruments and to devolve significant funding for skills and apprenticeships in particular.

Secondly, we recommend that the Authority comprise three key agencies, for which it provides strong democratic and strategic leadership: Transport North East, taking over from the existing Integrated Transport Authority expanded to include Northumberland and County Durham; Skills North East, taking responsibility from Whitehall for driving improvement in skills; and North East International, which, working closely with the LEP and the constituent local authorities, promotes tourism, trade, innovation and investment in the region.

The LEP needs to be embedded in the Combined Authority, so that the voice of enterprise and business is fully articulated. The LEP also has important immediate priorities, notably the establishment of North East Finance to ensure a successor to the Jeremie regional venture funds, and regional infrastructure and growth funds, and these need to be foundation stones of North East International.

Third, it is vital that next April we launch not only an organisation but also its mission, with clear compelling objectives to which everyone signs up. “More and better jobs, North East International” should be the watchwords, and in the report we recommend immediate objectives.

In skills, we urge a doubling of youth apprenticeships and matching the national average in the number of school leavers going on to higher education, with the region’s universities taking real responsibility for this.

In transport, the priorities should be a North East smartcard, like Oyster in London, promoting easier and cheaper bus use and interchange between bus, metro and train, faster inter-city rail connections, aiming for some two hour 30 minute services from Newcastle to London in the next East Coast franchise; sorting out the bottlenecks on the A1 and the A19 as an immediate priority; and getting a direct flight to the US from Newcastle as soon as possible.

For North East International, the priorities are setting up the new venture capital funds; getting a proper tourist promotion capacity in place; and promoting ‘open innovation and growth centres’ to energise universities, their most innovative graduates, and new and existing companies, to set up more and better companies, with a special focus on three growth sectors: advanced manufacturing, life sciences and marine technology and services.

A key objective is to keep more of the brightest and best graduates and postgraduates in the North East through internships, scholarships and mentoring.

We need a surge of enterprise and reform driven by a passion to create more and better jobs. North East International, North East Skills, North East Transport – driven forward with passion and purpose by a new Combined Authority. Together, we can make a go of it, and our region and its people deserve no less.

This article first appeared on the Guardian website on 11 April 2013.
The full report can be read here. 

This book review appeared in The Times on Monday 29 April 2013.

Alan Johnson is the nattiest dresser in Labour politics.  When I was his junior minister in the Education Department, I would admire the succession of immaculately well cut lightweight suits, pressed shirts, tasteful cufflinks, faultless Windsor-knotted ties and smart shoes. There was never a hair out of place.

AJ (as we all called him) had strong views on what other people wore too.  He had a particular thing about cufflinks on single cuff shirts.  Since the civil service is the worst dressed profession in the country, every meeting must have been agony.

One of the most evocative passages of this wonderful and moving childhood memoir is the account of his dad Steve dressing up smart in their cramped and dingy flat in Notting Hill every Sunday morning to take him and his older sister Linda to see their grandmother.

It was an elaborate ritual, polishing his shoes, ironing his short, choosing his tie. “It was probably the army [Steve was a lance corporal in the war] that made him so meticulous.” The iron was heated on the stove in the fireplace and Steve would put a crease in his suit trousers by putting a sheet of brown paper between the material and the iron.  After the Brylcreem “the final flourish of his toilette was the fixing in place of the elasticated silver armbands that held his shirt cuffs just so on the wrists.”

Steve was a self-taught pianist who played everything in pubs and clubs but never learnt to read music.  Teenage Alan spent hours strumming away at the guitar and playing in bands until, aged 18, he married his (almost) first love, Judy, who had been abandoned by her Italian fiancé when pregnant and had a two year old girl.  Whereupon AJ got a proper job, as a postman, which was to take him to the top of the postal workers’ union and ultimately the Cabinet.

The trouble is, after the brief Sunday visits to Nanny Johnson, they would go to the next door block of flats to visit Steve’s friends Ted and Elsie.  Or usually Elsie alone, because lorry driver Ted wasn’t often there.  Alan and Linda were sent out to play.  As for Steve and Elsie, what they were playing at came out when Linda barged in on them one day. Linda was only six, and nothing was said on the way home, but she promptly announced to their mother Lily: “I saw daddy kissing and cuddling in bed.  He doesn’t love you any more. He loves Auntie Elsie.” Steve boozed away his irregular earnings, came and went between affairs, then abandoned Lily entirely.

Linda is the star.  The dedication “For Linda, who kept me safe” becomes breathtakingly true by the end when Lily’s death leaves Linda, 16, and Alan, 13, on their own, and Linda persuades social services to let them live alone in a council flat rather than be put “in care.”

The heart of the memoir is the story of Lily, a Liverpudlian out of water in London, who scrimped and saved, washed and cleaned to earn enough for the children, in constant poor health.  After Steve there was no new love, just pain and grief, and an early death after a failed heart op.  All unreadable with a dry eye.

Thanks to Lily and Linda, AJ made it.  He passed the 11-plus, read voraciously, latched on to a few good teachers. He didn’t like Sloane Grammar School, but it was a world apart from Sir Isaac Newton Secondary Modern where most of his primary school mates went.

As for Steve, after he deserted Lily, Alan saw him only once more.  At Lily’s funeral.  “The ordeal lasted for no more than a few minutes. He asked me how I was and said he had a gift for me.  It was a key ring with a miniature football attached to it.  I took it, thanked him, and we walked away from each other. For ever.”