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All power to Yorkshire

Michael Crick | 11:29 UK time, Thursday, 30 September 2010

Has power within a political party ever been so geographically concentrated?

Rosie Winterton, the MP for Doncaster Central, was yesterday appointed by Ed Miliband as opposition chief whip, a post she's due to hold for the next five years. Miliband himself is MP for Doncaster North (and is, incidentally, the sixth successive Labour leader to represent a mining seat, or former mining seat).

Meanwhile, the posts of shadow chancellor and shadow home secretary are likely to be held by two other MPs who represent seats in that swathe of the Yorkshire coalfield between Leeds and Doncaster.

Yvette Cooper is MP for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, while her husband, Ed Balls, represents Morley and Outwood.

This area has seen perhaps the two worst corruption scandals of Labour history - the Poulson scandal of the late 60s and early 70s, and the Donnygate affair of the 1990s, which saw at least 21 Doncaster councillors convicted of fraud and other crimes.

Ed Miliband and his colleagues should remember the kind of political communities they represent and which picked them as the "New Generation".

Comments

  • Comment number 1.

    'Has power within a political party ever been so geographically concentrated?

    As far as any 'power' exists within an opposition just recently rejected, one supposes so.

  • Comment number 2.

    Yes. A little place called London.

  • Comment number 3.

    yes the City of \London and we must never, ever forget it when schools are closing and hospitals shut down...it was those guys who caused it all....

  • Comment number 4.

    ...[doncaster council] which has 26 Labour councillors, 12 Liberal Democrats and nine Conservatives....

    The report found that the people of Doncaster were 'not well-served" by the council because 'the desire to pursue long-standing political antagonisms is being given priority over much-needed improvements to services for the public'.



    more recently

    ..A FORMER council official and three builders have admitted corruption in the final court case of one of Britain's biggest inquiries into local government fraud...



    The council's children's services department was criticised recently in the wake of the Edlington boys torture case, and put under special measures but today's report makes clear that its housing and education services are also underperforming badly and are unlikely to improve without outside intervention.



    so will doncaster be the model for the uk?

  • Comment number 5.

    not that much power up north?

    ..The ´óÏó´«Ã½'s human resources director for its new northern headquarters in Salford Quays has become the latest ´óÏó´«Ã½ executive to decide against a move north, it has emerged.

    According to media reports, Paul Gaskin opted to quit his £190,000-a-year role in July after less than two months in the post.

    Speaking to the Mail On Sunday, Gaskin said: "I did not want to move to Manchester and so decided to leave. It is as simple as that."

    Gaskin joins a growing list of senior ´óÏó´«Ã½ executives who have opted against making a permanent move north, despite expecting hundreds of workers to do so.

    Around 2,300 roles are scheduled to transfer to the MediaCity base at Salford Quays, including the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s marketing, sport and future media and technology departments, along with parts of Radio 5 Live.

    Last month, it emerged that ´óÏó´«Ã½ North director Peter Salmon and his deputy Richard Deverell will not be relocating their families to the North West.



    how grim is it north of watford?

  • Comment number 6.

    "Ed Miliband and his colleagues should remember the kind of political communities they represent and which picked them as the "New Generation".

    Indeed, but then how many people today really do understand what the terms 'worker', 'workers' party' and Labour Party meant? Workers or working class didn't mean 'common people', this just referred to people who didn't earn their living from capital, speculation etc.

    Workers were doctors, lawyers, everyone except capitalists in fact.
    People these days eh? Speak a foreign language they do.

  • Comment number 7.

    it's grim up North and they still wear clogs, so comforting to know that the beeb exec's are going join us

  • Comment number 8.

    "7. At 2:57pm on 01 Oct 2010, stevie wrote:
    it's grim up North and they still wear clogs, so comforting to know that the beeb exec's are going join us"

    Back in the 1990s, The Blue Team threatened to send lots of the Whitehall Vogons to Derby as part of their Libertarian purge-the-state programme. They calculated that most Southerners feared that Derby's not very nice, a bit like what they imagine Siberia to be. Siberia's quite big, and quite nice ( in places) of course..Clogs you say?


    People today seem to forget that when they see comments on the declining interest/trust in politicians the reality is that they don't have a lot of power anymore.- they gave it way decades ago in the name of Libertarianism. Since 1979, at least, politics has been about limiting the size of the state. Before Thatcher and friends began their mass erosion of the state, politicians could instruct Civil Servants on how to run Public Services as much of the means of production, exchange and communication were in public ownership, so what they said mattered. As more has been privatised, and with the economy largely devolved to the markets and BoE, politicians have given away nearly all of their power.

    That's why nobody takes them very seriously anymore surely? How is this not anarchism?

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