Jennifer Williams

A year ago, I started following how the cost of living crisis was playing out at an Oldham school, checking in with the fantastic @NewmanRC_Head every few weeks. I ended up learning a lot about the British state, and its education system, to boot. on.ft.com/3KYWPWv

@bridges_tom The relationship between what things feel like and what the economics tell you is not always clear. The US is a good example and writing about GM this week made me consider that a lot. Is growth the metric you want to use politically? Because the readacross to life isn’t direct

@bridges_tom What strikes me most about that chart is, having lived it, I know exactly what was going on on the ground when that big GM jump happened. Which then had to be regained after covid. The level of the change feels not commensurate with the line on the graph.

In 2004 West Yorkshire’s productivity was higher than Greater Manchester’s. In the period since then it has fallen behind; by a long way. And the comparison with the UK average is not good either.

@GroomB Completely agree and he’s often notably absent from the story. It’s a complicated story with lots of players. I agree there’s a q about how outlying places benefit (the jury is out among economists) but for the govt, how you do it in other cities is also crucial

Bernstein was very important, but we shouldn't forget Graham Stringer, who made the hugely important decision in 1987 to embrace private sector investment.

Lovely piece on Bernstein's role in Manchester's revival. 'He thought the city needed to stand on its own two feet, rather than relying on endless fiscal transfers from London. That meant sidestepping obstacles, often imposed by the state itself, and convincing investors.'

@PaulHRoberts I understand the residential strategy from an economic perspective but that doesn’t mean time shouldn’t have also been devoted to what was fast coming through re low incomes and high rents. I first clocked it in about 2013, I think, but it just wasn’t a strategic priority

@PaulHRoberts I think it’s complicated (too complicated for on here!) but it’s fair to say he wasn’t fussed about social housing capacity or provision. Imho MCC’s ignoring of what was coming down the line in that regard was short sighted and it’s now paying the price (literally)

The Howard Bernstein tribute newsletter: the lessons ministers should take from Manchester’s unfinished business on.ft.com/3Z48Otx

Was at Howard’s Memorial yesterday. What an extraordinary impact he has had on our great city, and what a prescient influence he was on what made a difference, in politics and regeneration. Proud just to have spent some time with him in Manchesters reconstruction at Hezza’s side.

@oldtrotter Quite

@JenWilliams_FT I didn’t know that about the GMPF. That said, you could be pretty sure that GM would have some well evidenced proposals to support. Not sure that you can say the same in other areas of the U.K. Quite a few LAs have got into financial difficulty on the back of unwise choices.

@atticusfinch104 Thankyou!

@JenWilliams_FT Great article

@EthanDaviesMEN Woooooo 🎉

🏆 🚀 I’m beyond proud to have been named the 2024 Local Democracy Reporter of the Year this evening by the BBC. I’m away so I couldn’t make the ceremony. But dialling in to have a chat with Sir Lindsay Hoyle at 5.45am made it even more memorable

@thomasforth So THAT was the mystery purchase

Another day of listening to economists talk about the lack of capital investment in growth holding back regional economies in Britain and I shamed myself into making the capital investment. I bought the £1300 graphics card.

Impossible to bullet point something so complicated, but, leadership, strategic consistency, opportunism, flexibility, imagination, confidence. Imagination is particularly wildly undervalued in the way we approach this stuff imho.

The lessons are oddly under learned imho. Not everything turned out right in Manchester and also some of it is subjective anyway. But as a lesson in applied economics, you’d have to be mad as a minister not to study what he did

Trying to write quite a complicated newsletter about regional economic development under this govt and my word, if Howard Bernstein didn’t already come into my head at virtually every moment when I’m thinking about this stuff, after the memorial in Mcr yesterday it’s extra

Very happy to see @TheDataCity data featured in the FT. Using our website matching and AI classification technology we've been able to classify the UK's companies into (five of the eight) sectors in the industrial strategy and then cluster them together. on.ft.com/4fKB75w

Safe to say the two mayors don’t take the same approach on this stuff, as the “under review” clean air zone signs scattered around our motorways attest

IIRC Howard Bernstein was talking about looking at a version of this before (and I think for a while after) Andy Burnham was elected, then it all went quiet

Not to sound like a stuck record but Homes England, where it fits into the housebuilding target and how it works with mayors, feels significant. This suggests a shift in emphasis

Eamonn Boylan appointed interim CX at Homes England. Potentially significant for mayors pushing for more influence over housing spend - he was Andy Burnham’s chief executive and oversaw the devolved fund that helped rebuild Manchester’s skyline gov.uk/government/new…