Strayside Sunday is our monthly political opinion column. It is written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party. 

August 1^st is Yorkshire Day, the day we hang out the white rose flags, revel in the natural and sometimes bleak beauty of our great county, celebrate our heroes from Harold Wilson to Alan Bennett, from Betty Boothroyd to Dame Janet Baker, from David Hockney to Emily Bronte and rebel against the cheap and cliched stereotypes of flat caps, whippets and black pudding.

In fact, Yorkshire Day has its roots in two historic events; the first being the Battle of Minden in Prussia in 1759, when the King’s Own (as opposed to God’s own, one presumes) Yorkshire Light Infantry formed the larger part of an Anglo-German force that, under the command of Field Marshall Ferdinand of Brunswick, sent packing the French forces of the Marquis de Contades.  In celebration and to this day, a white rose adorns the Light Infantry’s headdress.  Quite right too.  Another great Yorkshireman, William Wilberforce MP, led the campaign for emancipation that ended with the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act on August 1^st, 1833.

However, Yorkshire Day’s modern roots lie in protest.  In 1975 the Yorkshire Ridings Society in Beverley used the day to protest the local government re-organisation of the previous year.  The word riding is, by the way, derived from the Danish word thridding, meaning third, or in this case one of three, North, East and West).  Those reforms introduced the two-tier (county and district) system of local government that has remained largely intact, in North Yorkshire at least, until now.

Last week, Housing and Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick announced the much-trailed devolution settlement for North Yorkshire.  The two-tier system goes, with a single unitary authority to be constituted from April 2023, serving the 618,000 residents of the county (excluding the City of York) and costing an estimated £38 millions of your money and mine to set up.  This ending an increasingly bitter scrap between two opposing bids for unitary powers, that of Councillor Carl Les’ North Yorkshire County Council, arguing for a single unitary authority and that of the seven districts, led by Harrogate’s own Councillor Richard Cooper, arguing for two.  Between them this sorry lot spent a staggering £330,000 of our money on consultants from PWC (North Yorkshire, £90,000) and KPMG (seven districts, £240,000) to help write their respective bids.  The more I hear about government spending on big consultancies (£3 billion on Test & Trace anyone?) the more I think I’m in the wrong game.

I doubt very much that this Yorkshire Day will see anyone lamenting the demise of Harrogate Borough Council, let alone the organisation of a protest at the reforms.  This council will disappear leaving an honours board of failure and mismanagement and leave a mettlesome legacy to the new unitary:  The financial sink hole that is the Harrogate Convention Centre, the actual sink hole at the new Ripon baths, the vanity project that is the council HQ at Knapping Mount, the outdated (and undelivered) town plan, a £165,000 Visit Harrogate website, a diminished and drab Harrogate town centre, a hotch-potch of unsympathetic housing developments, a political culture astonishing for its secrecy (more politburo than democratic body) and profligacy (Viv Nicholson would blush) and, perhaps most damning of all, it leaves a fragmented, fractious and divided group of stakeholders that the council under Richard Cooper’s grip has consistently sought to divide and conquer, rather than bring together in common purpose.  If this is the demise of Harrogate’s Dear Leader, then good riddance.  I wouldn’t bet on it though, as word reaches me that the starting gun has fired in Harrogate & Knaresborough Conservative Association on jockeying for selection for the new council seats.  As ever in these matters the likely outcome is ‘different party, same guests.’

Thank goodness the Secretary of State rejected the so-called east-west bid, citing likely and significant disruption during the transition period.  He makes the case that the unitary will benefit the county by between £58 and £61 millions per year.  We can but hope the additional funds are spent wisely and in our interests.  I’m in favour of the new authority.  I want to pay one council tax to a single and accountable body.  I want my local authority territory to match that of the pending re-organisation of the NHS, so that the council and Integrated Care Systems can work together in concert to promote public health, preventive care and to improve health equity and outcomes across our population.

I don’t buy the argument that the unitary will be ‘distant’ on the merits, any distance being in fact a product of our own lack of engagement and action.  Local politicians have been quick to say they fear the new deal will lead to fewer voices standing up for local people.  Call me cynical but I have an inkling that what they fear is that it won’t be their voice.

So, this August 1^st I choose to celebrate the bravery of the Yorkshire Light Infantry at Minden and the emancipation vision of William Wilberforce.  While perhaps not quite as perspicacious as Kingston-Upon-Hull’s famous son, we should celebrate too that the members of the Yorkshire Ridings Society circa 1975 knew and warned us that the two-tier system of local government was doomed to fail.

Happy Yorkshire Day.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Read More: 

• Strayside Sunday:  That sinking feeling in Ripon


• Harrogate Borough Council believes itself above scrutiny