Northern Agenda hits the road in build up to General Election
A newsletter dedicated to politics in the North has launched a new series — getting out on the road to key constituencies in the run up to the General Election.
The Northern Agenda’s Road To the Election got off to an early start after a by-election was called in the Blackpool South constituency following the resignation of MP Scott Benton following a lobbying scandal.
In the podcast, Northern Agenda editor Rob Parsons visits the seaside resort to gauage the reaction of residents as the political circus comes to town.
The video, also produced as a podcast, was produced by Reach Studios, the new audio/visual division of publisher Reach, which hosts the Northern Agenda across northern titles such as the Manchester Evening News, Liverpool Echo and Newcastle Chronicle.
Rob said: “There’s more reason than just political intrigue to care about Blackpool, a place which tells us a fascinating story about the decline of coastal towns and the challenges facing the ‘levelling up’ agenda.
“With its miles of golden sands, pleasure beach and theatres hosting the country’s most popular entertainers, Blackpool has been arguably the best place to have fun in the North of England since the late 19th Century.
“Scores of people still descend on every year for some fun by the seaside — including a huge 20m in 2023. Sadly, just a few streets away lies some of the country’s most dire poverty.”
The general election — whenever it is called — is likely to be heavily influenced by the so-called Red Wall constituencies which traditionally voted Labour and swung to vote for Boris Johnson’s Conservatives in the General Election of 2019.
Previewing the series, Rob said: “Across the North of England voters will be going to the polls five years on from the dramatic 2019 election where large swathes of our region broke the habit of decades by switching their allegiance from Labour to the Tories, putting Boris Johnson into Downing Street in the process.
“If the polls are anything to go by, those so-called ‘red wall’ seats are now set to go back to Labour — plus a few more besides.
“But polling can only tell us so much about what’s happened in the North in the last 5 years.
“We want to hear from these Northern communities directly so between now and the election The Northern Agenda will be going to key seats around the North, we might even venture into the Midlands, to find out what’s making them tick.”
The Northern Agenda has around 14,000 email subscribers, and includes a weekly podcast and weekly column distributed across Reach’s titles in the North every weekend.
It was highly commended as the digital initiative of the year at the Regional Press Awards earlier this month.
