Arnold Craven is the Conservative candidate for Mayor of West Yorkshire Mayor.
In February of this year, I was selected by West Yorkshire Conservative members as their candidate for Mayor of West Yorkshire in the Mayoral elections next month. It was one of the greatest honours of my life to have members from all over the region put their faith in me to take on the incumbent Labour Mayor, Tracy Brabin.
My political worldview has always been about two discrete but connected things: getting the state off people’s backs wherever possible, but where we do need the state, making sure decisions are made as close to the people they affect as they can be. Growing up on a tough council estate in Wakefield, I saw first-hand the problems remote and unaccountable decision-making can cause. Even when driven by good intentions, it’s very easy for bodies that are distant and faceless to stop listening and start doing things to you, rather than for you.
When your mum can’t let you go out to play because there are drug needles on the pavement and the police have stopped coming around, but you turn on the television to see Tony Blair talking, from Downing Street, about how much better life is in every part of the country after his first two years in office, it is difficult to not become sceptical about centralised government.
That’s why devolution has always interested me. Yet I was never convinced reclaiming powers from Brussels but retaining them in Whitehall would do anyone much good, especially not for those of us in the north of England.
Despite always being driven by Conservative philosophies (I’ve promised my campaign team I won’t raise Adam Smith or J S Mill on the doorstep!), for a number of years I was Chairman of the Yorkshire Party. Those of you in Yorkshire will likely know about that party, but for those reading from outside the Ridings, the Yorkshire Party was formed in 2014 by a group of ex-Conservatives and Liberals, with a smattering of Labour involvement. The party’s ambition was to bring regional devolution up the political agenda and pull meaningful powers out of Whitehall, towards the north of England. And I believe it succeeded. Hundreds of thousands of people voted for that party in General, Local and Mayoral elections, and the tired old ‘devolution is just an EU plot to split up the United Kingdom’ trope started to fall away.
People started to realise, in part because of the direction and approach I instilled the Yorkshire Party with, but also because of the efforts of many other excellent academics, business people and politicians, that the UK’s uniquely centralised political system was not conducive to driving real growth and prosperity in the north.
So the arguments for devolution were won. We have devolved administrations in most of Yorkshire, with East Yorkshire and Hull soon to follow West, North and South Yorkshire in electing a Mayor.
Which brings us back to my candidacy. I hesitate to quote our former Prime Minister by suggesting, much like Cincinnatus, after the devolution debate was won I retired to spend more time with my plough. But the truth isn’t that far away.
I joined the Conservative Party because I believe in Conservative values, and don’t want to see the United Kingdom suffer under a Labour national government in Westminster, just as we are suffering in West Yorkshire under a Labour Mayor and Combined Authority in Leeds. However I was happy to busy myself with association matters and a bit of Wakefield Council politics.
But then the encouragement came. Friends and colleagues started to raise the West Yorkshire Mayor candidate vacancy. ‘You’ve had such an interesting career’ the pitches usually began, ‘why not bring some of that to the Mayoral campaign?’. And it is true. I have led a good career; at last count I’ve been involved in bringing well over £300 million of private sector cash into West Yorkshire. I’ve worked with some of the biggest names in construction and investment and now I spend much of my professional life talking to people who make investments in the billions, not the millions. And when I talk to those people they’re disappointed that, so far, the opportunities to kickstart progress and prosperity in our region that devolution should bring just haven’t happened under the current Mayor.
It is this, more than anything else, that made me decide to throw my hat into the ring. I was delighted when we secured a powerful devolution deal in West Yorkshire. But we elected our Mayor in 2021. That’s three years ago. And what has been achieved since then with those devolved powers? Not a great deal of anything. West Yorkshire still doesn’t have a mass transit system. We lag far behind other Combined Authorities on brownfield regeneration and development, and our police toil under confused and poor political leadership.
I’m standing to be West Yorkshire Mayor because we need more than devolution in the north, we need delivery. I’ve been delivering professionally for well over a decade. I am asking the people of West Yorkshire to put their faith in me to deliver politically.
The post Arnold Craven: Devolution isn’t enough – West Yorkshire needs delivery appeared first on Conservative Home.
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Author: Arnold Craven
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