Cllr Iain Lindley’s Diary

Over at Manchester Confidential, Jonathan Schofield has penned a piece about the CSJ Breakthrough Manchester report. This has caused the ever-excitable Manchester Labour hack Chris Paul to get, well, even more excited - which is not a surprise, given that Schofield’s piece is complete cobblers.

The nonsense starts with the title:

Tory Report Blasts Manchester

It’s disappointing that a journalist has seen fit to use such a sloppy, sub-Labour Party headline - the subtext here being ”the Tories are only interested in running this City down”. Salford’s Labour politicians wheel this one out every so often when they start to lose an argument.

It’s sloppy for three reasons. Firstly, had Schofield turned up to the Breakthrough Manchester event - and particularly the discussion groups that followed it - he would have found a relentlessly positive, forward-looking attitude amongst almost all of the attendees, including David Cameron, Iain Duncan Smith and the rest of the keynote speakers. Secondly, you have to acknowledge the existence of a problem before you can attempt to solve it - ignorance certainly isn’t bliss.

Thirdly - as noted by David Ottewell - the CSJ Breakthrough Manchester report contained much of the same analysis and statistics (if not the policy prescriptions) as Manchester City Council’s State of the City report. Presumably Schofield penned a piece about that particular publication entitled “Labour Report Blasts Manchester”. No? Thought not.

Schofield then devotes much of his article to how the statistics are misleading because the Manchester City Council area isn’t really the “full Manchester”:

The statistics reflect a demographic problem which is uniquely Manchester’s. The report looks at the administrative area of the City of Manchester rather than reflecting the situation of the wider city - most of the time anyway. In a way, it fiddles the figures, providing a statistical measure of a relatively poor administrative area.

This entirely misses the point. Yes, of course you can improve the statistics by drawing an ever-larger geographic circle around the city centre, but this report is about the problems primarily encountered in the inner-city. That the Manchester City Council area is largely an urban core only makes the statistics a more reliable indicator of the state of the inner-city - unlike some other Greater Manchester authorities which stretch (to varying extents) from the inner-city out into suburbia and beyond.

Yes Jonathan - you can make the statistics rosier by changing your definition of Manchester - but does that solve any of the challenges facing our urban areas? No. Do the proposals in Breakthrough Manchester apply equally to Ordsall and Old Trafford? Yes.

Now, remember the negative title of this article, “Tory report blasts Manchester”?

Those left behind in this regional diaspora were inevitably the stubborn or the less well-educated and thus less able to realise their aspirations.

I wasn’t aware that the 1974 local government reorganisation was an experiment in social segregation, but that seems to be Schofield’s opinion. I also find the assertion that those residents who found themselves in the post-1974 City of Manchester were either stubborn or uneducated to be a) profoundly wrong, b) probably rather offensive and c) extremely ironic given the opening premise of the article. There are no such sweeping generalisations in the Breakthrough Manchester report, nor were there any in the speeches given at the launch event. So who exactly is “blasting Manchester”?

That’s why the social deprivation stats are so high. It’s these people who need to be re-integrated into the future of the city - if they have the desire to be so.

This is what the Breakthrough Britain research is all about - but no acknowledgement of that in the article.

Education and employment are the key of course. Part of the former must include building pride in Manchester, giving kids a sense of identity.

Clearly Schofield missed the keynote speech on education delivered by the Leader of the Opposition during the Breakthrough Manchester event, littered with praise for some of the great achievements of Manchester.

Manchester’s problems are no worse than those in other urban areas of the UK, they are merely magnified by the way the city and the region has developed.

More poor journalism. It was repeatedly pointed out that whilst Manchester was the first event, the CSJ has similar events planned for across Britain. Manchester was in no way being “singled out” for special criticism.

It’s all bad enough so far, but Schofield saved his ultimate piece of cobblers for the conclusion:

One final thought, let’s hope there’re no politics at play in this Conservative report. Manchester has been used as an example by Labour of urban regeneration, they hold their conferences here, they seem to have fallen in love with us. There are no Conservative councillors in the city. To attack Manchester works so well for the Tories in so many ways.

Well, where to start?

1. It is an indisputable fact that there are no Conservative Councillors on Manchester City Council, although I am sure this will be rectified in the near future. However, Schofield spent most of his article arguing that Manchester City Council didn’t really represent Manchester, and of course in his “full Manchester” there are numerous Conservative Councillors.
2. Where did the Conservative Party hold their Spring Conference in 2006? Manchester. Which City will host the Conservative Party Conference in 2009? Manchester. Which City will host the Conservative Party Conference in 2011? Manchester.
3. The Conservative Party is committed to Manchester. As David Ottewell acknowledges, David Cameron has been a very regular visitor to the City. Conservatives field a full slate of candidates for Manchester City Council elections, despite it being electorally one of our very weakest areas. Every Manchester resident has the opportunity to vote Conservative. By contrast, the Labour Party doesn’t even bother to put local candidates up in Conservative areas of strength.

The Conservative Party is not “attacking Manchester”. Breakthrough Manchester is an honest analysis of some of the problems facing the inner-city - but in that regard it is no different (and certainly no more negative) than Richard Leese’s State of the City report. What is different is that the Conservative Party is putting into place radical and forward-thinking proposals to solve those problems.

I don’t expect everyone to agree with everything in the report or in David Cameron’s speech, but Manchester deserves better than Schofield’s carping article which offered nothing constructive whatsoever.