A Regional Manifesto for a regionalist Labour Party

It's been over two weeks since we lost the election. UKIP are eating into our votes all over England, Plaid are doing a good job in some South Wales valleys seats and the SNP all but destroyed the Labour Party in Scotland. Let's face it, the Labour Party is in chaos; Andy Burnham was right to say that this is not ground zero for the Labour Party electorally, things can be much, much worse. We need to look at what fundamentally went wrong.

Labour's opposition to an English Parliament is in my view justified, we need regional assemblies so areas that are look over from Westminster can be changed. In the years under Blair and Brown, New Labour did wonderful things in the North West, Manchester has been transformed from what it used to be, Liverpool has had lots of money thrown at it, and it's worked, these places now have the infrastructure recquired for a so called "Northern Powerhouse" or as I like to call it, Mega-City 1 (kudos to the nerds that get that reference). The areas that we forgot about have rejected Labour for arguably the last ten years. We did nothing in Scotland, running the country with a sense of arrogance, that said that even a donkey could win an election for the Labour Party in Scotland. We have let the north east rot, where were the investments outside of Newcastle and Sunderland? We let the north Kent marginals just grow with no infrastructure for things like roads, schools and hospitals and then wonder why these areas have some of the worst healthcare in the country.

If Labour is to win these ares back from the hands of UKIP and the Tories, we NEED to bring about some actual change. A northeastern assembly could do wonders for places like Durham and Northumbria, it would bring investment into towns like Darlington and Bishop Auckland. A West Midlands assembly could stop the absorption of the surrounding areas into "Greater Birmingham" and actually create jobs for people that need them. Enhanced power for Wales and Scotland can show the people of these proud nations that a United Kingdom is the best for everyone. If we don't stop the tide of nationalism with a wall of regionalism, the Labour Party will be gone as we know it.