The Northern Agenda

Having a mayor - what now for the North's new political superheroes?

Listen on

Episode notes

We're a week on from the local and mayoral elections and the dust is still settling on a set of results which dealt another major blow to Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives.

And it was the election of metro mayors - the political figureheads for big regions like the North East, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire - which made most of the headlines.

But while most Westminster pundits - and Rishi Sunak himself, are preoccupied with what these results mean for the upcoming General Election, there's a lot less attention being paid to the mayors themselves. Who are they, what are their policies and why are people voting for them, if they bother to vote at all? And do they really know how to run their regions better than Westminster?

This week as the new mayors got back to work after the elections Rob Parsons speaks to one of them, South Yorkshire's Oliver Coppard, about why he's prioritising transport in his second term. 

And Rob gets the bigger picture with three brilliant guests:

• Jen Williams, Northern Correspondent for the Financial Times, who wrote a great piece last week about how the mayoral elections mark a milestone for English devolution and has taken a particular interest in the affairs of Tees Valley Ben Houchen. 
• Gill Morris, executive chair of Devo Inflect, the UK's leading devolution public affairs agency. 
• Professor Katy Shaw from Northumbria University is one of the experts who helped write Gordon Brown's commission on the UK's future, setting out plans for sweeping constitutional change, which Labour leader Keir Starmer has promised to implement.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices