Jim Hancock reports

Business operates on a slender thread in the North West. The thread I refer to is the region’s transport network.Where were you on January 18th? Stuck on a motorway or a snarled-up urban road I’ll be bound.

Even though I was in Chester, I should have realised that as soon as the Thelwall Viaduct closed the chaos would ripple out across the region. So it proved as the M56 at Stanlow soon resembled a car park and I was its prisoner for three hours.

I know the winds were the most violent for 17 years, but it isn’t 17 years since far less severe conditions have brought road, rail and air communications to a standstill. Our transport links are not robust enough to avoid business losing big money to delay and congestion and something must be done.

Having got that off my chest, I want to tell you that either side of my enforced detention on the motorway I attended two interesting political events.

For some years now Cheshire County Council has wanted to be the Big (Cheshire) Cheese running all the services in the county – consigning the likes of Congleton and Vale Royal district councils to oblivion. The failure of the regional government project in 2004 temporarily froze plans to rationalise our Town Halls.

But last autumn Ministers once again turned their attention to the confused patchwork that is local government in the North West. Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly said she was interested in creating more all purpose (unitary) councils, scrapping the two-tier county/district structure.

I made a routine call to the Cheshire County Council press office seeking confirmation that, in conformity with their longstanding policy, the council would be putting in a unitary bid. However, I was told that at the last minute the ruling Conservative group were having a touch of the vapours and their intention was now unclear.

Receiving information like that had a similar effect to that of a trace of blood in the water on a shark. Why the change of heart? What political shenanigans were afoot? The windy morning of January 18th found me circling County Hall in Chester seeking The Truth.

It turned out that Tory leader David Cameron had let it be known that he did not share his Cheshire councillors’ enthusiasm for unitary councils. This move presented a major challenge for Cheshire Tory leader Paul Findlow. He decided to recommend trying to make the twotier system work better.

Findlow is everything a Shire Tory Leader should be. He has a rotund figure, a rich voice and a set of eyebrows only rivalled among political figures by Denis Healey. Despite these attributes he was unable to convince many of his own Tory councillors, let alone the opposition parties, to abandon Cheshire’s aspiration to rule the world from Chester to Crewe.

Afterwards I was expecting to find Cllr Findlow furious. But not so. The only furious aspect of our encounter was the wind. During lunch no less than two great oaks came down outside the venue between the main course and the
dessert! He was amused by my suggestion that the gods were indicating their anger with his fellow councillors for defying him.

What it will all mean for Cheshire’s council taxpayers remains to be seen. Chester City Council is leading a drive to give the county two unitary councils rather than one.

With the wind at last abating, my evening was spent interrogating potential Tory parliamentary
candidates in the village of Thornton Hough.

In Wirral South they were conducting a primary. Loosely based on the American model, the idea is to involve the general public, as well as party members, in choosing a candidate.

It has already been used in Sefton Central and Bolton North East and the most obvious danger that hordes of Labour and Lib Dem members would pack the meetings and choose the worst performer has not materialised.

But some think the primary system does make it hard for outsiders and so it proved in Wirral South. A local lawyer who’d fought Wirral West for the Lib Dems at the last election will now wear the Tory rosette at the next.

I travelled home on some back roads reflecting that a politician’s opinions, like the wind, are always changing

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