Strayside Sunday is our weekly political column written by Paul Baverstock, former Director of Communications for the Conservative Party:

This week has seen a flurry of proposals from local leaders to reinvigorate Harrogate and its economy as we begin to emerge from lockdown: North Yorkshire County Council has set up an in-house taskforce; Independent Harrogate has published a 1700-word mission statement with its proposals for Harrogate town centre; and we have even heard from Harrogate’s Lib Dems (remember them?) with their idea of creating multiple, Coronavirus Recovery Teams.  It’s reassuring to know that there is no lack of appetite, dearth of ideas or offers of industry to make Harrogate thrive.

My suggestion in last week’s Strayside Sunday that Harrogate lacked the magic ingredient – that of leadership - to harness this obvious and abundant energy seemed to touch a nerve and elicited lively correspondence, for which thank you.

In addition to innate qualities of vision and energy, leadership needs both a platform and method to flourish.  Around the world, imaginative governments, whether national or local, have used a technique called Citizen’s Assemblies to bring together often vehemently opposing groups to discuss and reach a negotiated settlement on highly contentious issues. This method, in which professionals facilitate a group of between 100 and 160 socio-demographically representative people for an intense period of what is called deliberative consultation, is well proven.  Among other successes, it led to a change to the Irish Constitution to allow gay marriage, to a new proportional voting system in British Columbia, Canada and to the creation of the NHS Constitution here at home.

If it can achieve those potentially contentious things, a Citizens Assembly here in Harrogate could certainly bring together Independent Harrogate and Zero Carbon Harrogate to work our way through the car versus bike, parking versus cycle lane debate.  So come on Mr Jones and Mr Cooper, grab your chance to lead and create a nation-leading model for unifying people and interests in the name of covid recovery.  You’ll find no shortage of willing and qualified participants, you’ll energise the town, and you’ll make a name for yourselves nationally. Think big, be big.

Talking of making a name for yourself, Dominic Cummings has been the national news story of the week. Dominic is a formidable political strategist, but, in common with many intellectually gifted people, he doesn’t suffer fools, nor is he in any way reticent with his views.  In my experience he holds the political classes in contempt, whether they be politician, civil servant or party apparatchik.  He is self-consciously out of step with the accepted norms of political behaviour.

Boris Johnson knows that without Cummings, the government will lose its’ policy conscience, lose the driving force behind the “levelling up” agenda, and still the beating heart of the Conservative’s stated objective for this parliament, coronavirus or no, to bring jobs and socio-economic progress to the Red Wall seats here in the North.  No wonder Boris is loath to let him go.  But let him go he must, or the Prime Minister risks fatally undermining his own position of trust with the Great British Public.

Harrogate MP Andrew Jones was quick to condemn him. It’s good to see our MP getting involved in a heated public debate for a change, even though in political terms going after Mr. Cummings is a freebie, with little or no personal political risk.  Andrew Jones is a remainer though (albeit one who voted for every iteration of the Brexit deal) who's unable to find ministerial preferment in BoJo’s heavily Brexiteer team.  Nonetheless, more of this ‘sharp-elbowed’ engagement please Mr. Jones.

Finally, the town’s cyclists taught me a new word this week, namely Todesrinne.  This, translated from the German, means “death gutter” and is used to describe the narrow cycle lanes which are painted on the periphery of existing road surfaces.  The German’s have a knack for capturing the essence of a thing in their language and in this case its instructive. Not all cycle lanes are created equal and, when we do get them, as we must, they need to be properly planned and integrated, rather than painted on as a symbolic afterthought.

That’s my Strayside Sunday.

Got a view on my views? You can get in touch with me on paul@thestrayferret.co.uk