Tom Richmond: The Tories haven’t put their heart in the cities

Having dismantled the regional ministers that were set up by Gordon Brown, and which proved surprisingly effective, the PM took a year before giving responsibility for the cities to Greg Clark.

He’s not a familiar figure in these parts. He’s the MP for leafy Tunbridge Wells in Kent who has been making the headlines – for all the wrong reasons – over the Government’s cack-handed attempt to streamline the planning laws.

Clark is now in the invidious position of being involved with policy on planning, decentralisation and the cities – and he’s not doing any of these roles particularly effectively.

His party conference speech, at no more than 660 words, was pitifully short on detail – a brief name-check for eight cities (Leeds and Sheffield were the only two from this patch) and then this statement: “The best way to protect the countryside is to make our towns and cities great places to live.”

Taken at its word, there is nothing particularly contentious about this statement – more development does need to concentrate on brown field sites (provided there is the supporting transport infrastructure and so forth at the outset).

Clark then went on to say: “Britain won’t prosper unless our cities proper...my role as Minister for Cities is to give power away from Whitehall and Westminster and put in the hands of local people.”

What does this mean? To me, it sounds like a mish-mash of soundibtes to mask the fact that responsibility for planning, policy devolution and cities has been passed to one person.

Given this, it’s not surprising that Tory poll ratings are plummeting in these parts – voters who were prepared to listen to Cameron last year feel they are being ignored by a party that is pandering to the Home Counties rather than looking at innovative ways for the North to prosper at a time of unprecedented upheaval in the public sector. My question to David Cameron is this: is your refusal to appoint a Minister for Yorkshire anything to do with the fact that you have no one who is capable of fighting for this region?

I’M not sure whether it is a compliment but two key themes in Chancellor George Osborne’s speech to the Tory conference on Monday were actually made in this column a week ago.

First, his public recognition of William Hague’s ‘save the pound’ campaign a decade ago – a prophetic point given that this theme actually ended in electoral ignominy – and second Osborne’s confusion over whether Labour is a predator or a producer under Ed Miliband. Now, George, how about some more hard-hitting policies to create jobs, and apprenticeships, in Yorkshire. What’s stopping you?

HIS militancy means he is invariably public enemy number one, but RMT boss Bob Crow made a key point this week about the “betrayal” of workers at Derby-based train manufacturer Bombardier.

He said that a written Lords answer revealed that only two of the nine officials who evaluated tenders for the Thameslink contract had an engineering background. Most, said Crow, came from the finance and legal professions.

No wonder Britain is in a mess when the Government – on key contracts – cannot devise a mechanism whereby the best engineers, accountants and legal advisers work together to try and forge a deal that protects British jobs.

IT may have been just one word – but its use convinced me that TV cameras should not be allowed into the courts.

Krishnan Guru-Murthy, a presenter on the compelling Channel 4 News, referred to the speech given by Amanda Knox in the Perugia courtroom, where she was cleared of murdering Leeds University student Meredith Kurcher, as a “performance”.

Others then discussed whether the “performance” had done enough to sway the jury (which it did). It’s the same with the manslaughter trial of performer Michael Jackson’s physician.

Performances, and commentary on them, should be left to the sphere of the performing arts – and let the courts concentrate on the facts.

A FINAL question. Why does Robert Peston, the BBC’s business editor, always seem so happy, and even more over-excitable, when a bank is in danger of financial collapse?

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