Wednesday 6th August, 2014
Stalybridge Railway Station, Stalybridge
The Buffet Bar at Stalybridge Station is phenomenally good. It is to CAMRA members what Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port is to Catholic Pilgrims, being as it is the starting point of the so-called ‘Real Ale Trail’ - where beer aficionados spend a somewhat squiffy afternoon slowly making their way from Tameside to Leeds along the Huddersfield Line, drinking at every one of the excellent station pubs along the way.
Wistfully looking at the three be-cardigan’d men clutching their Day Explorer tickets, I set two coffees down next to Linda Riordan, the unashamedly left-wing Cabinet Secretary for Transport and Infrastructure. That said, I’m a stickler for chatting to anyone about the railways, so I am prepared to look away from the inviting pub clips for the time being.
Stalybridge has yet to be annexed into the Yorkshire Reich, but I have been informed by her office that she has just concluded a meeting with the Mayor of Greater Manchester regarding the Woodhead Tunnel, so the station, being as it is close to the border, makes for a suitable meeting place.
Riordan has been MYA for Halifax and majordomo at the Yorkshire Transport Authority since it was established under the “Yorkshire and Humberside Act, 2011”, prior to that, she served briefly as Under-Secretary for Housing in the dying days of Fabian Hamilton’s government. Since re-entering government, her Departmental Authority has taken over day-to-day operation of local bus routes, certain regional railway services and strategic investment and lobbying. Riorden has been at the forefront of the latter, leading the campaign for electrification of the Hull-Liverpool Route as far as the Pennines.
“It was delayed, typically,” she notes, dunking a hob-nob, “and the failure to get the properly elected City Region Mayors that we wanted for Greater Manchester and Merseyside until recently hasn’t been great either.”
I find myself warming to Riordan. She is clearly someone who has a precise way of doing things, but that is certainly no vice in a job that calls for such clear attention-to-detail. Thanks to an increase in the size of the bloc-grant from Whitehall that was brought in as part of the Transport (Devolved Assemblies) Act, 2006, Yorkshire has enjoyed somewhat of a renaissance in Railway infrastructure. Whilst per capita spending still remains far, far below that enjoyed by Londoners, I was gratified to know that my unpleasant Pacer journey that took me from Penistone to Leeds the other day is probably one of the last ones, the glorified bus chassis is to be phased out by 2016 (only twenty years later than expected...).
I say as much to Riordan, who gives a brisk nod.
“That is precisely what the Assembly is good at,” she says, “actually managing to get enough people together to tell DafT precisely where they are going wrong.”
I am slightly taken aback by her cavalier use of the disparaging acronym - doesn’t she appreciate that London still holds the purse strings?
“Yes, but hopefully - not for much longer. John has been excellent at lobbying for some limited income tax policy to be devolved to us in Bradford. Despite his many flaws, Stewart Hosie was very effective at lobbying for it up in Holyrood, and I cannot see the Prime Minister denying to Leeds what he has given to the Lothians.”
As a member of the Conservative Party’s sizable Scottish diaspora in England, Liam Fox has certainly proved surprisingly willing to further the devolution agenda throughout our increasingly Disunited Kingdom. Cumbria-Lancashire may still lack the Assembly that we enjoy in Yorkshire and in the North East, but the City Region Mayors seem to be firmly on the agenda, and the clamour for electoral reform from the swelling ranks of Mr Alexander’s Liberal Democrats and from the less antediluvian members of the Labour Party also seem to be hinting at a substantive re-think of the constitutional question.
I recall my thoughts outside Leeds City Hall, and I decide to ask her if the Idea of England is dead.
She pauses. Outside, another gang of Real Ale Fans have alighted from the Piccadilly Train. The bar once again swells.
“I wouldn’t say that ‘England’ is dead as such,” she replies, “after-all, we’re all English during the World Cup, to name just one example, and whilst we're fortunate enough to have our regional pride and identity - you don’t really see that same love for such meaningless terms as the ‘North-West’, do you?”
I nod my head - it is a point that I’ve considered quite a few times.
“But certainly, I think that a lot of people in places like the Midlands are looking at how much better the provision of public services has got in areas that have devolved government and are wondering where
their new buses and social housing is.”
Is it that - or is it more a case at resentment from non-devolved areas getting uppity at subsidising poorer regions. The Wessex Regionalists and Libertarians did astonishingly well in the previous month’s Winchester by-election, after-all.
“I don’t think that we are looking at ‘Balkanisation’ or whatever rubbish
The Economist came out with the other week,” she says dismissively, “this is about giving ordinary people control over their futures in a much better way that they could ever be granted at Westminster - and I’m not going to apologise to bankers having to stump up a little bit extra.”
She drains her cup.
“I mean - I dispute the idea that the South subsidises us anyway,” she adds, “we’ve got a larger economy than the whole of Scotland for a start, and we can’t be the sort of left-wing dinosaurs that the London Media complain about all that time anyway, otherwise why would EY have re-located half of their offices to Leeds last year?”
The point is conceded. Riordan leans towards me, eyeing up the crowd at the counter.
“Now, why don’t we have a proper drink?”