The North East Deserves Better Than Reform UK. Here's How To Stop Them

By Lennon Airey, Editor of PoliticsRelaxed

It’s election night 2029 and, as the clock strikes 10pm, the exit poll releases the long-awaited election result. It has been a tight election, with vicious campaigns on both sides. The exit poll declares that Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK, has been elected Prime Minister of the United Kingdom with a solid parliamentary majority, the equivalent of a blank cheque to do whatever he wants for five years. Although the results of general elections always have a profound impact on a country, just imagine the impact of Nigel Farage’s election to Number 10. A neo-Nazi schoolboy who flirted with the far-right, a man in the pocket of the Kremlin, and a man who has vowed to privatise the NHS, all while leading a party housing the worst of race-based politics, feeding on the discontent of ordinary voters. No matter the size of the majority that Farage wins, every route to Downing Street rests on him winning the support of working-class voters in the North East of England. We must stop him from doing so.

The North East deserves better than Nigel Farage and Reform UK, but I fear that the North East is gravitating towards them. This article is not party-political, nor will it argue that immigration reduction is the only path for a second Labour term. I grew up in the North East of England, and I still call it my home. For me, the way to prevent the rise of Reform in the North East rests on two words: pride and aspiration.

The first strand of my argument is framed around restoring pride to the North East of England.

The left is constructing a narrative of the North East framed around class-based politics. I argue that such a narrative is a relic of the glory days of trade union power during the miners’ strikes of the 1980s. Reform, by contrast, are trying to divide the North East along ethnic lines, pitting people against a common enemy. Both approaches are flawed. Instead, I believe that the politics of the North East should be framed around the pride of the people of the North East, a pride that ran deep through our industrial heritage, and has lost itself under the veil of neoliberalism and globalisation. I will argue that the way to defeat Reform in the North East is through reinventing the immense pride of the North East as a region, through reindustrialisation providing well-paying and high-skilled manufacturing jobs back where they belong. Furthermore, the industrial heritage of the North East provided great social cohesion within communities. Labour must reinvent the social and cultural bonds in the North East through devolution and giving the people of the North East real agency in making decisions about their area. I also argue that Labour needs to change leader and replace Keir Starmer with a leader who understands what it means to be from a working-class background in the North of England, and has reimagined his political career through using a local mayor's role to rejuvenate a deindustrialised Northern city into a renewed powerhouse: Andy Burnham. I will now tease out these points in more detail below.

Nothing short of a reindustrialisation of the North East of England is required to restore pride to the region. The impact of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative government on the North East was profound. In 1985, Thatcher announced that North East Shipbuilders, a company formed by all the yards on the river, some dating back as far as 1346, was to close despite an order for 25 Ro-Ro Ferries from a Danish company which gave the new business the healthiest order book in the world. A similar pattern was experienced in the coal-mining industry. Domestic demand for coal fell by 14% between 1979/80 and 1982/3, and in response in February 1981, the National Coal Board proposed significant pit closures. British Steel Company (BSC) employment also fell from 166,000 to 71,000 between 1980-1983. The unemployment, decline of trade unionism and the collapse of the pit-village structure of the North East has led to a region floating aimlessly in the post-Thatcher years, devoid of any purpose. The region that was once the ship-building capital of the western world has fell flat, in desperate need of new, innovative industries to once again harness the rich industrial heritage that underpins the North Eastern mindset. The solution to these challenges is not to elect Nigel Farage and Reform UK. A card-carrying member of Thatcher's Conservative Party, Farage's facade of friendliness towards deindustrialised communities is wafer-thin. Dig deep below Farage's laddish personality and you'll see a man adorned with a Dulwich College education and a background in the City. But he still leads poll after poll in deindustrialised communities.

The answer now is to reinvent the industrial mindset, and turbocharge the economy of the North East and utilise the growing industries of the future to deliver more well-paying jobs. According to the Sustainability Community, the North East of England is swiftly emerging as one of the UK’s premier arenas for clean energy investment. One standout example is Newcastle College’s Energy Academy in Wallsend, which has secured a substantial £8.48 million investment. Once completed, this expansion will triple student intake, equipping thousands of young people with the engineering and renewable skills this green energy boom demands. On the industrial front, Siemens Energy’s Newcastle facility has received a £2 million boost, creating 65 new jobs to produce critical substation components, a tangible example of how investment is translating into local manufacturing growth. On a broader scale, the Northern Endurance Partnership (NEP)—a carbon capture and storage project backed by Equinor, BP, and TotalEnergies—has secured final investment approval. It is set to store up to 4 million tonnes of CO₂ per year and launch the Net Zero Teesside Power project, a 742 MW gas-fired plant with carbon capture. These developments promise around 2,000 direct jobs in the North East and roughly £4 billion in supply chain opportunities. Over the next ten years, the economy will gravitate towards growing, new sectors. To restore regional pride, the North East must be placed as an industrial leader, leading economic growth and innovation to dust off the economic declinism and restore itself as a great technological and manufacturing leader.

Underneath the turbocharging of the economy of the North East ought to be a more localised power structure, giving the North East Combined Authority more economic agency and powers to spearhead new and emerging sectors. Since the election of Kim McGuinness as Mayor of the North East in 2024, the North East of England has seen significant investment, especially in advanced manufacturing, green energy, digital, and life sciences, boosted by its new devolution deal, an Investment Zone focused on clean energy, and major private commitments like Blackstone's £10bn AI hub, with strong focus on creating a strategic industrial ecosystem. Important new projects include Atom Bank's HQ move, expansion by companies like Siemens Energy, and a £160m Investment Zone targeting 4,000 jobs in green tech, highlighting a push for high-value growth in strategic sectors. Indeed, Sunderland has been a city transformed in recent years. In the financial year 2024-2025, Sunderland received £29.75 million of funding from Homes England to support infrastructure at Riverside Sunderland, alongside £50 million of investment through the recent JATCO/Nissan deal which will provide for a new EV powertrain plant, creating jobs and supporting the EV supply chain. Underpinning the recent investment in Sunderland has been a common thread, to develop a city on the up with a strong cultural undertone. Housed within Sunderland's renovated Keel Square, Culture House Sunderland: The National Centre for Creative Smart Cities will be a multi-purpose cultural venue, home to the City Library with state of the art digital features, celebrating the histories and cultural achievements of Sunderland as a region. These investments build on Sunderland's "3,6,9 Vision," aiming to deliver thousands of jobs, high-quality living and working environments, and a revitalised cultural scene, attracting both public and private sector commitment. Compare that with Nigel Farage. Since his election as MP for Clacton in 2024, Farage has earned the nickname 'never-here Nigel', and travelled to the US Congress in 2025 to lobby the US government for more tariffs on UK jobs and industries. Talk about a plastic patriot! There is a strong foundation in the North East to partner with the national government to turbocharge our towns and cities. However, the government must go further. The North East used to lead the way in production of crucial raw materials, owing to its manufacturing culture. Indeed, the name 'mackems' comes from the dedication of the people of Sunderland to the ship-building industry. Now, through devolved power and continuing the strong investment and innovation in our financial sector, the North East must reject the fake economic patriotism of Nigel Farage and put our foot down as a region to change the decades of economic decline through local economic planning and partnerships and begin to reap the rewards of longer-term economic growth.

This leads nicely onto my next point. There is a Northern city that has transformed itself in recent years, innovating its' financial sector and powering itself into the next generation of job creation and economic prosperity. Over the past decade, Greater Manchester has become the UK's fastest growing city region, with annual growth and productivity outpacing the national average. A new £1bn ‘GM Good Growth Fund’ will pump prime a pipeline of projects, driving growth in every district and delivering regeneration at a pace and on a scale not seen before this century. The first £400m investment will deliver nearly 3,000 new homes, more than 22,000 new jobs and 2 million square feet of new employment space. The ‘Good Growth’ approach includes helping people overcome barriers to employment and giving everyone a clear line of sight to local high-quality jobs through improved social housing and employment rights. By helping maintain its current growth levels of 3.1 per cent, Greater Manchester could add a further £38bn to the UK economy by 2035.  The leadership of Andy Burnham has been crucial to this transformation. Having left Westminster a decade ago, Andy Burnham left behind the party-first attitudes of politicians and developed a strong Northern identity as a mayor on a mission to transform the prospects of his own region. While Greater Manchester is an example of the importance of devolved local economic powers, Burnham's leadership is too impressive to ignore. Poll after poll places Keir Starmer as the least popular Prime Minister since polling began, while Reform make considerable gains in council elections in the North of England. Dubbed the 'king of the North', Andy Burnham understands the cultural fabric of the North, and is the man best-placed to defeat Reform in a general election. Compare the two men: Farage and Burnham. Farage sold the British people down the garden path in promising that Brexit would mean an economic rebirth for Britain. Burnham, on the other hand, has delivered an economic rebirth in the face of challenging post-Brexit economic circumstances. For me, Keir Starmer is an impressive political figure, but is more a civil servant than a Prime Minister. Burnham, with his strong Northern roots and impressive track record of delivery ticks all the boxes to become the next Prime Minister and resonate with the pride of place with North Eastern voters. There is no-one better to lead the economic rejuvenation in the North of England than a Northerner, so this leadership change is crucial for Labour to restore trust in the Northern heartlands and defeat Reform.

The second strand of my argument is framed around promoting aspiration in the North East.

Fiona Hill’s recent publication ‘There’s Nothing for you Here’ is a brilliant description of growing up on a council estate in the North East. Hill, however, draws on the crucial fact facing so many from the North East of England: you must move out to move on. Fiona Hill’s journey from a council estate in Bishop Aukland to a leading national security advisor in the United States proves two things. First, the crushing reality that the North East of England, far from championing aspiration and ambition, has weakened it. Second, there is enormous talent and potential in the North East. There is neither a lack of ambition nor talent in the North East of England, there is just untapped ambition and talent.

Schools struggle on after a decade of austerity, children go without the youth services and activities they used to enjoy, industries have collapsed and, worst of all, the North East has been forgotten about by a London-centric political system, seen merely as a poor second to the prosperity of parts of London and the South East. The everyday hope of working-class parents that their children will have a better life than they did is the beating heart of communities. In making good on that promise, the North East can defeat Reform. Bridget Phillipson has began to put her finger on the pulse here. Extra investment in education, the expansion of free school meals for some of the poorest students in the country, the formation of free breakfast clubs in local schools and the reintegration of Best Start Family Hubs are all pointers in the right direction for the North East. Owing much to her own roots in a state-school in the North East of England, Phillipson has also sought to promote vocational qualifications through the creation of new technical education colleges, to ensure that the North East can rely on a steady supply of home-grown talent to fill new job vacancies. Labour must now go further.

As a concept, social mobility has failed. While that might sound strange given that there are no current members of the cabinet that attended a private school, the institutions within education are failing our children alongside more systemic problems, namely child poverty. The government's most recent abolition of the two-child benefit cap will lift 70,000 children out of poverty in the North East. This is no small achievement, but the government must now ensure that education is a source of genuine mobility and aspiration. The North East of England has the worst educational attainment rate of any region in Britain, which must also change if Reform are to be defeated. In short, the ordinary ambition of families to give their children the best start in life must be realised. Finland has a 100% adult literacy rate and in their education system children don’t pick up a pen until the age of 7 and do no exams until 18, and even that is optional. Instead, Finland places emphasis on creativity as it recognises that the youth of today are the adults of the future as it focuses on fostering cooperation over competition in schools by inculcating the skills of teamwork, collaboration and team spirit in students. The most important reason for Finland’s success as an education system however is because the government holds education in high esteem and prioritises it. According to various sources, Finland spends 7% of it’s GDP on education, a substantial amount, doubling England’s meagre 3.9% in 2018. In placing education at the heartbeat of the government agenda, Labour can be the party of aspiration and ambition. I would make a comparison to the Reform Party, but their only education policies thus far seem to be to reverse the changes to VAT to give private schools a tax break, and to remove the teaching of critical race theory from the curriculum. Then again, four of their current five MPs had the privilege of an expensive private education, so we shouldn't expect too much from them. Labour must become the party of working-class aspiration, with the education system as the vehicle and most important lever. With extra investment, and the benefit of having a Secretary of State for Education from the North East, the region ought to see significant benefits and improvements which, when contrasted with the vacuum of Reform's education policy, should be a means of reconnecting with working-class voters in the North East.

Pride and aspiration. These two words have been scattered throughout this article. The Labour Party is not down and out. Reform is not a shoe-in. What is clear, though, is that this is Labour's game to lose. To avoid the catastrophe of Reform winning the next general election, Labour must reconnect with voters in the North East of England, with a message framed around not only aspiration, but aspiration to succeed in a growing, prosperous region where opportunity and community are restored and the far-right do not succeed.