Not one of them is a Tyke, but Yorkshire is a hen with big wings and all four of the main candidates for the Labour leadership are being claimed for the county. David Miliband, the bookies’ front runner, appeared in a grainy colour picture on local television, aged about eight, playing in goal for Newlay Junior Mixed and Infants in Leeds. Father Ralph, the Marxist intellectual, was lecturing at the university at the time.
The family decamped to London, but young Ed Miliband wisely returned when he began looking for a safe parliamentary seat. He finally hit on Doncaster North, a collection of mining villages, which had been a National Union of Mineworkers constituency since time immemorial – at least. It was bequeathed by Kevin Hughes, an ex-miner who had a majority of 22,000 in 1997 – 55 per cent of the votes cast and a handy margin for an ambitious politician. It was half that figure this time round, but still unloseable, unless Geoff Hoon was standing.
As if to prove that two Eds are better than one, Ed Balls also came north to begin his political career. He first took Normanton (my home town, and once offered to me by Labour whips in the Strangers’ Bar, but we’ll hear no more of that) and when it disappeared under boundary changes, he switched to Morley and Outwood following a useful career move by incumbent Colin Challen into full-time environmentalism.
T’other week, I predicted that Balls would fend off the Tories’ campaign to give themselves a “Portillo moment” by defeating him. And I was right. But it was a damn close-run thing. His winning margin of 1,101 votes, against a notional majority of nearly 9,000 and with a swing of 9.3 per cent to Conservative in this boundary-changed seat, scarcely bodes well for the future.
His constituency is mutating, from an old mining area with an admixture of textiles and much of Yorkshire’s famous “rhubarb triangle”, to a commuter-belt suburb of Leeds. Former colliery sites are disappearing under ranks of ticky-tacky boxes. The rhubarb remains, mostly spoken by the smart-alec Tories who thought they could decapitate Labour’s putative leader-in-waiting. Balls is 7-1 in the bookies’ list, the same as the other Ed.
But what of the “dark horse”, Mrs Balls, aka Yvette Cooper? At 33-1, she might be worth a flutter. Yvette’s majority in Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (she inherited most of hubbie’s old seat and now has the largest mainland English constituency with 83,000 voters) this time was a comfortable 11,000. The swing against her was even higher, more than 12 per cent, but her parliamentary position is infinitely less threatened. Alas, enthusiasm for the struggle to succeed Gordon Brown doesn’t seem to shine out of those clear blue eyes.
The other adopted Tyke, Alan Johnson, returned with a healthy 6,000 majority on a pathetic 45 per cent turnout in Hull West, announced the day after Brown resigned that he wouldn’t be a candidate. Beaten by Harriet Harman by less than half of 1 per cent for the deputy leadership and turning 60 on May 17, he plainly felt he’d be too old by the time of the next general election. To be frank, I never thought he had the killer instinct. Success came almost by accident, although he handled it well. Johnson will back David Miliband.
“We have a great bevy of talent”, he insisted. “And David is the greatest talent.” That’s a debateable point.
Miliband senior is the MP for South Shields. I can only assume that when he went looking for a safe seat, all the Yorkshire berths had been taken by members of that fine old City institution, the Honourable Company of Carpetbaggers. But if ever he’s in trouble up there, I imagine another Challen opportunity will present itself in God’s Own County.
It looks a racing certainty that Labour’s next leader will come from a constituency in northern England. Behind the leading pack, Andy Burnham, the boy Health Secretary until last week, is a Scouser who sits for a Lancashire seat. He’s on at 14-1, and even rank outsider Hilary Benn, quoted at 50-1, sits for Leeds Central. The only likely prospect from the south, Jon Cruddas, the philosophy tendency candidate (“I stand therefore I am”) represents Dagenham and Rainham, Essex, and weighs in at 20-1. Outside trade union circles, he is unknown up ’ere.
I’m not really a betting man, but I’ll lay £5 evens that a northerner, by birth or politically expedient adoption, will take the podium in Manchester on September 28 to offer a fresh vision for Labour. And will say absolutely nothing about the north.
Meanwhile, Labour’s performance away from Westminster was encouraging. The party made gains across the region, taking Liverpool back from the Liberal Democrats, who also lost control in Sheffield. Labour leaders in the steel city rejected demands to join a Lib Dem-dominated cabinet. A sharp divergence between the two parties is clearly under way.
Labour’s position also improved in Wakefield, Barnsley and Leeds, where the hard-fought binmen’s strike last autumn turned voters away from a Tory-Lib Dem alliance running the city. Labour made four gains and is now the largest bloc on Leeds council. Bradford is under no overall control.
This may not yet be a march back into power in old bastions, but it’s the first steps along the way. There are reasons to be cheerful – certainly in this neck of the woods.
