I HOPE Liverpool socks it to the world by making the Capital of Culture year a red hot success. I really do.
No British city deserves a rollicking good renaissance more than Liverpool, which had its heart ripped out by commercial decline and depopulation right through the 1970s and ‘80s.
But the omens for success in 2008 are not good.
You see, big ambitions just aren’t enough to deliver brilliance for Liverpool. Fancy logos are not enough.
Nothing really works unless the politics are right.
And the politics haven’t been right in Liverpool for donkeys’ years. The political scene is too bitter, too small town, and prone to fatigue and despair.
Turbulent times have bred turbulent times - from Sir Trevor Jones’s era of fake Liberal radicalism, through to the grotesque rule of Militant and Derek Hatton, right up to the bitchfest that was the relationship of former city council leader Mike Storey and departing chief executive Sir David Henshaw. So it goes on.
All that feistiness and nastiness among the politicos and their publicly-funded hangers-on has occasionally been entertaining, I will admit.
But the effect of such bickering has been corrosive to Liverpool’s image and reputation. The result is that the city is not really trusted as a serious player in the urban regeneration business.
You can tell by the way so many fancy-pants schemes have crashed and burned – the Fourth Grace fiasco and the trams debacle among them.
The Institute of for Public Policy Research report recognised this recently and concluded that Liverpool – unlike Manchester and Birmingham – wasn’t ready to be one of the first wave of ‘city regions’ taking control of up to £600 million of funding.
For most of the past 30 years, while Liverpool burned, metaphorically and in some cases literally, its tinpot masters played petty politics with each other. Now the entire region is paying the price for their self-indulgence.
Yes, it is true conditions had improved for the battered and bruised city by the beginning of the new millennium. It would have been surprising if they hadn’t. Liverpool was bound to benefit from a relatively strong UK economy and a certain regaining of national confidence.
But that comfortable era is over now. Our country and the world are becoming scary and precarious again. Only the strong will thrive in the uncertain times upon us.
And Liverpool has missed a lot of chances in recent times, caused by local political sclerosis. The city council can’t even get the basics right – keeping the streets clean and the pavements mended.
Things have not improved as fast or as confidently in Liverpool as they have in comparable British cities.
Newcastle-upon-Tyne lost out on culture capital status but its surge in redevelopment and confidence since then has been stunning.
Birmingham and Manchester are both outperforming Liverpool in the development stakes, and so is Leeds.
Even ugly old Hull seems to be getting its act together.
The trouble with Liverpool is that the people with political power and influence just aren’t used to pulling together.
The players involved in regeneration have even squabbled over logos. As if logos matter diddly-squat.
Regeneration, and the pulling in of huge wedges of public funds needed to bring it about, require a degree of collaborative working, plus serious and confident politics, and (let’s be honest here) a ruthlessness that’s missing from the political culture of Liverpool.
I live in New Brighton and I am very happy indeed to do so (despite the resort’s own regeneration problems).
But there are occasions when I gaze across the River Mersey at that famous skyline and think ‘what a great city, what great people’.
The trouble is that Liverpool is a city of lion-hearts … led by donkeys.
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Andy McFarlane wrote...
Hull isn't really that ugly. However, it is quite old.
Posted by: Andy McFarlane | February 28, 2006 5:53 PM