A tale of two knights

Manchester boasts the greatest concentration of students west of Moscow. 'The Corridor', a vibrant university and business district surrounding Oxford Road in the city centre, is home to:

• the University of Manchester
• Manchester Metropolitan University
• the Royal Northern College of Music
• a host of knowledge-related businesses.

A £2.5bn investment and regeneration plan for the entire zone – including the redevelopment of the old Eye Hospital into incubator space for new bio-tech businesses – is being driven forward by a novel partnership company embracing the city council, the universities and local employers. The aim is to boost the area’s employment to 77,000.

Dynamic and stable

This initiative is typical of the dynamism of Manchester city council. In stark contrast to the position in most of the other cities I have visited, there is unstinting praise for the council leadership from the city business, voluntary and media leaders. Stability, competence, pragmatism, vision – one or all are mentioned wherever you go. Manchester has big challenges.  Low skill levels, unemployment and deprivation are all serious. Public sector cuts will bite hard. But the city and its neighbours have a string of regeneration and employment successes to match.

Andrew Adonis in Manchester

Underpinning it all is the highly successful and durable double act between the city’s two knights, council leader Sir Richard Leese and chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein. Leese has been leader for 15 years, and was deputy leader for six years before that. Bernstein has been in post for 13 years, and spent practically his whole previous career at Manchester council, starting as a junior clerk. It is very different from the "here-today, gone-tomorrow" chief executives who characterise so much of local government, and the weak and unstable political leadership which I found in some other cities,  notably Bristol and Bradford.

The two knights

 can testify to the Leese/Bernstein partnership from my time as Transport Secretary and Schools minister. No city lobbied more strongly or effectively for high-speed rail and local transport improvements than Manchester. The city now has the best tram system in Britain, and it is being radically extended. The city also embraced the academies programme to replace failing schools.  The two knights personally engaged prominent Manchester employers – including Manchester airport, the children’s hospital, BT and the Co-op – to sponsor and manage a new generation of 'made in Manchester' academies. Stability can breed inertia and complacency. There is little sign of it in Manchester. Rod Coombes, pro vice-chancellor of Manchester university, reels off a list of projects done or planned in partnership with the city council. "I am in and out of Howard Bernstein’s office the whole time.  Manchester’s universities would not be the force they are without this close partnership," he says. "The same would be said by the two football clubs and most of the city’s big businesses."

Greater Manchester

Manchester city council’s boundaries are tightly drawn, so partnership working with the nine other authorities which make up Greater Manchester is essential. This, too, is a success by comparison with England’s other regional conurbations. Last week Greater Manchester secured parliamentary powers to become a "combined authority" – in effect, an indirectly elected regional authority able to take on strategic powers over transport and economic development. To have secured agreement from all ten authorities, with their distinct agendas and political make-up, was another coup. The two knights achieved it by subtle diplomacy.  The chair of the combined authority is Peter Smith, the leader of Wigan, with Manchester providing the back-up support. The Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership works to the same boundaries as the combined authority. So does the police authority. When the first Police and Crime Commissioner is elected next year, the combined authority will gain an elected dimension. This could be the first step towards a broader democratic personality for Greater Manchester, which lost its elected metropolitan authority in 1986.

A second city in all but name?

"Manchester now sees itself as England’s second city in all but name," says Clive Memmott, chief executive of the chamber of commerce. "The combined authority needs to focus on infrastructure, skills and bridging the north-south divide within Greater Manchester. It has our full support." If the combined authority succeeds, an elected mayor might ultimately make sense for Greater Manchester. But there is little support for a mayor for the city of Manchester alone. Few want to disrupt or shorten the reign of the two knights.