Ben Houchen on the Tees Valley mayoral campaign: It's all about the jobs

IT was Ben Houchen’s surprise pledge to nationalise a struggling airport that gave his mayoral campaign lift-off in 2017.

He was, though, flying into the political weather as the Tees Valley was then a Labour heartland, with four of the five councils and all but two of the MPs in its colours.

But Mr Houchen’s success in landing the role of mayor and then in securing the £40m purchase of the airport has given wings to the wave of Toryism that has swept through the region since.

But Tees Valley Toryism seems very different from the traditional image of the Conservative Party.

“It’s all about pragmatism,” says Mr Houchen who, on Thursday, will be standing for a second term as mayor in a two horse race against Labour’s Jessie Joe Jacobs. “A good example is that I was happy to nationalise an airport, which raised a lot of eyebrows, but then we’ve also championed one of this Government’s most free market policies in freeports.

“I’ve always taken the view, and maybe it’s because I’m from Teesside, that people want to get things done – they don’t care about the means of how things are done as long as they are done.

“This comes from a long history of nothing having happened in the area. People are less bothered about political arguments because they just want something to happen. It’s all project focussed rather than politics focussed. I don’t think how do I fit a project into my ideological world view, I just do it.”

From the same mould: pragmatic Conservatives Ben Houchen and Boris Johnson visiting a biological plant in Hartlepool

This pragmatic approach has echoes of Boris Johnson’s promise to just do Brexit.

“People think I’m too optimistic and a bit of a risk taker, but we’ve had so little attention for decades that tinkering around the edges will not solve the problems,” he says. “That’s why I get on well with Boris and No 10, we’re in a similar mould of not wanting to tinker – let’s buy the airport, why can’t we have the biggest freeport, why can’t the Treasury come to Darlington.

“Lots of what we are trying to achieve isn’t bolted on – the airport could still fail and if we don’t get the Treasury jobs right, in five years’ time the Sir Humphreys will say ‘we’re going back to London’ – but we are in a fantastic place with regards to the rest of the country.

“If we get right the three or four things we’ve just started, Teesside, Darlington and Hartlepool will not look the same in 10 years’ time. They will be completely different.”

His critics argue that by going for the big ticket promises of the headline-grabbers – the £200m GE Renewable Energy turbine factory, the 18,000 jobs at the freeport – that he is ignoring daily grassroots problems.

“There is a lot of deprivation and poverty within our region, but how do you tackle that without jobs?” he says unashamedly. “How do you tackle that without businesses and investment coming to the area? You can skill as many people as you want, but what are you skilling them for if there are no jobs?

“Ultimately it is jobs that help people, that put money in people’s pockets and provide for them and their families. Everything we do is about jobs.”

Even the airport, he argues, was just about jobs.

“People have this horrible way of saying it is all about a few holiday flights to Alicante, but if it had closed, 800 jobs would have disappeared overnight as lots of businesses said they would move out,” he says. “And if we are trying to attract investment, if people have to fly into Manchester and drive two-and-a-half hours to us, that’s not local – they’ll just stay and see what’s in and around Manchester.”

Not all of his 2017 pledges have been fulfilled. His plan for a commission into Cleveland Police didn’t come off, and although he sees improvement at the force, he still has strong words about its “rotten culture”. His plan for garden villages to take the housebuilding pressure off existing towns has become embroiled in an argument over Darlington’s Local Plan at Skerningham.

And the parmo didn’t get European protection as a delicacy specifically from Teesside before Britain exited the EU, although Mr Houchen hopes that the gourmet offering will be to the tastes of those drawing up the new UK replacement scheme.

Ben Houchen, the Conservative mayor who nationalised an airport. Picture: SARAH CALDECOTT

Still, his other high-flying successes have seen him listed as one of the 100 most influential Conservatives in the country – albeit at number 100 – and, as he’s only 34, there’s speculation that he would look for a seat in Parliament.

“I’ve got more influence and power than any backbench MP in the country, especially with a Prime Minister like Boris Johnson, who used to be a mayor himself, who understands what they can do,” he says.

“Some MPs never speak to him for months at a time, particularly during Covid, but I speak to No 10 on a daily basis, and I’ve got the organisation, the team and the budget behind me to deliver on projects.

“The local MPs come to me asking for assistance – we fully funded improvements at Middlesbrough train station for £30m which would have taken years for them to lobby the Government for – so I would rather be in my position.

“I love this job because it is the best of everything. One minute I can be talking about encouraging Ryanair to the airport, within 10 minutes I can be talking about attracting offshore wind suppliers, and then into a meeting with bus companies about their routes, and then I’m talking to a Middlesbrough business that’s dealing with Microsoft for their game for Christmas 2022.

“I need variety – that’s why I never made it as a solicitor.”

He grew up in one of the first 100 houses in Ingleby Barwick, studied law at Northumbria University and after a few years as a corporate solicitor became chief executive of an Australian sportswear manufacturer, BLK, that was breaking into the northern hemisphere. Then, aged 30, he successfully landed the job as the Tees Valley’s first mayor.

“I’m proud of how the last four years have gone and I can honestly say there’s nothing I would change,” he says.

“It’s the best job in the world, it’s like someone saying you can go and play football every day – it doesn’t feel like work, but it does have an impact on your personal life. Rachel, my wife, and I took a joint decision for the last four years to stop everything and see how it went – we have put on hold any talk about having a family. You can’t do this job unless you are completely wedded to it, and I’m very fortunate that Rachel understands how passionate I am about it.

“And so my life ends on May 6. I cannot imagine anything after May 6. If I lose, I walk away extremely proud of what I have achieved. I won’t be sad in that I came to do what I did and I did it to the best of my ability – as a politician, you know what you are signing up for.”

He’s pragmatic to the end, but will the voters on Thursday decide that the sky’s the limit for the airport-buying mayor and give him a second term?

BLOB Go to The Northern Echo website for a short video of Ben Houchen explaining his campaign priorities. You will also find there yesterday's profile of Labour's Jessie Joe Jacobs