A onetime Conservative MP and the nephew of a former Labour MP have created a new political party to represent the people of northern England.
The Northern Party, which launched on Wednesday, claims it will contest at least five major seats in the general election in Lancashire, including four key marginals.
Former MP for Blackpool North, Harold Elletson, and former Fylde Tory councillor Elizabeth Clarkson will stand as parliamentary candidates, as well as former prominent Green Party members Shaun Hargreaves and James Walsh, who play a major role in the Frack Free Lancashire Campaign.
With the recent talk of governmental powers being devolved to Manchester, and the rising distrust of centralised government after the Scottish independence referendum, it comes as no surprise that regional political parties have emerged ahead of the general election.
The Northern Party leader Michael Dawson, a former executive committee member of the Labour Campaign for Human Rights, said the party is a “northern rebellion against a system that has failed the north.”
Dawson said the party will contest marginals Morecambe and Lunesdale, Lancaster and Fleetwood, Blackpool North and Fylde, plus Rossendale & Darwen, which is being contested by Labour for Jack Straw’s son, Will.
Dawson’s uncle, Hilton Dawson, was Labour MP for Lancaster during the Tony Blair years, and himself now runs the regionalist North East Party. The North East party won its first council seat in Peterlee, County Durham, in December.
Despite its Lancastrian bias, Dawson insists the Northern Party has a pan-northern English focus and will represent Yorkshire, Cumbria, County Durham and Northumberland too.
“The standard political parties are dead,” he said. “This is about northern people taking control of their destiny. The establishment is going to get a nasty shock.”
The party calls for a Scottish-style “devo-max” government with tax raising powers in the north.
Its manifesto promises new ideas for a “new, united, prosperous and successful north.”
Dawson set up the Northern Party with former MPs and councillors from a broad range of political backgrounds, all of whom feel “disgruntled” at the main parties.
Elletson, who represented Blackpool North from 1992 until 1997 and served as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Northern Ireland Minister Sir Patrick Mayhew before defecting to the Lib Dems, established a pressure group called Campaign for the North last year to fight for devolution for the north of England.
He said in a press release: “Politics in Britain is changing and, here in the north, people want new solutions.
“Our call for bringing power and wealth back to the North is striking a real chord.
“We’re going to kick the established parties in the ballot box. We will change the course of the election in key seats in Lancashire.”
Dawson left the Labour party after concluding that Labour cannot improve the lives of ordinary people.
“Labour MPs nowadays are bankers and lawyers, they don’t represent ordinary people from up here, despite their facade as a ‘party of the people’,” said Dawson.
The Northern Party chairman, Ron Bell, a former Conservative candidate for Blackpool South, added: “The Northern Party is going to upset the establishment’s apple cart.
“We’re a new party for northern people and we want real change to a system that is no longer fit for purpose. We want devo-max for the north.”
The Northern Party and the North East Party are not the only pro-devolution regional parties contesting local and national seats in the north of England.
Across the Pennines, Yorkshire First calls for Yorkshire to have “more control over [Yorkshire’s] affairs” and to have “decision making powers to shape its own future.”
Asked whether the Northern Party is in competition with Yorkshire First, Dawson said: “There is only so much Yorkshire can do on its own. There are 15 million people in the north of England and we are much stronger together.”
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