The North’s biggest annual political and business event, the Convention of the North, took place in Preston, Lancashire, on 27 and 28 February.
The first Convention held under a Labour government, highlights included a rousing keynote speech from Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner; reflections from Shadow Secretary for Housing, Communities and Local Government, Kevin Hollinrake, on where the Conservatives’ levelling up agenda went wrong; and northern leaders’ launch of five “gamechangers” to grow the region’s economy.
This was the fifth Convention of the North that Social has supported. Here are our five key takeaways from Convention 2025, and what these could signal for the future of economic development in the North and nationally.
Takeaway 1: The North is driving the English “devolution revolution”
The English devolution landscape is unrecognisable from the first Convention we supported in Rotherham in 2019, when then-Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, addressed delegates with his nascent vision for what would eventually become levelling up.
Fast forward to 2025, and the English devolution movement – introduced by the Conservatives with the aim of rebalancing the UK economy – has been supercharged by the current Labour government.
At last year’s Convention in Leeds, amid anticipation of a General Election, Labour’s Angela Rayner vowed to be a “Deputy Prime Minister” for the North and to empower northern mayors to drive growth in their places.
Seven months post-election, her commitment to spark a “devolution revolution” in England is now in full force, with the North becoming the first part of England to be fully covered by devolution.
Rayner doubled down on that commitment in Preston, announcing the “biggest power shift in a generation” from Westminster to the North.
This puts the North in pole position to deliver on the Government’s growth mission, by equipping northern mayors and leaders with the levers to target investment towards specific opportunities in their areas and address the issues that have historically held their communities back.
While the Government’s prioritisation of the North in its devolution drive is welcome, and acknowledges the role the region’s scale and strengths can play in national renewal, there was nevertheless a note of frustration among some at the Convention that Government’s ambitions for the North still don’t match the region’s own. Which brings us to takeaway 2…
Takeaway 2: Government needs a new narrative for the North
Writing in the Guardian on day one of Convention 2025, Greater Manchester Mayor, Andy Burnham, argued that the next General Election will be decided by the North – just as the recent US election was decided by former industrial heartlands in the Rust Belt.
Laying down the gauntlet to fellow northern mayors and Government to grasp the opportunity to truly deliver for northerners, or risk further drifts from Labour to Reform, he called for a “new deal” for the North in the Chancellor’s June Spending Review.
Despite its many shortcomings, the Conservative’s “levelling up” agenda – and the Northern Powerhouse initiative before it – did at least articulate a clear policy position for the North that northerners understood and could get behind.
Now the need to rebalance the UK economy, with growth that people in the North and other economically depressed areas can see and feel, is arguably more acute than ever. And yet, despite Northern MPs occupying many of the key seats around the Cabinet table, the Labour Government hasn’t yet defined its version of levelling up or articulated a clear narrative for the North.
Devolution is rightly at the heart of the Government’s growth mission, but ministers need to do better at explaining why and how this will deliver for regions like the North in simple terms that relate to ordinary people’s concerns.
If there is one lesson that Labour MPs should take from the Democrats’ defeat in the US Presidential election, it’s that people don’t measure growth in terms of GDP or lines on a chart: they measure it in the price of groceries, the cost of housing and energy bills, and how hopeful they feel about their and their family’s future.
Levelling up was a narrative that connected with people’s disillusionment in what they see as decades of northern neglect and the deep pride they still have in their places. Yet it ultimately delivered little.
If they can get the narrative right, Labour has an opportunity both to meaningfully deliver for those who feel they’ve missed out on the benefits of growth and tell a compelling story that will convince voters to reward them again at the ballot box in 2029. The upcoming local elections in May will be a useful early barometer to gauge how voters are feeling about the Government’s performance so far.
Takeaway 3: Transport remains the North’s biggest barrier to growth
Get any group of northerners together in a room and it won’t take long before they start complaining about the state of the region’s transport.
So unsurprisingly, transport was once again a dominant theme at Convention 2025.
If there was one aspect of Chancellor, Rachel Reeves’s, growth speech in January that really disappointed northerners, it was the amount of transport investment announced for London and the South East – including backing for a third Heathrow runway and improved transport links between Oxford and Cambridge – while key northern infrastructure schemes remain on the backburner.
Connecting the North through a transformed rail system was one of the five “gamechangers” to grow the North that Convention leaders unveiled in Preston, and the barriers to growth that transport under-investment places on the northern economy cropped up in almost every panel discussion.
There is continued frustration among northern leaders that the original vision for Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) – a high-speed rail line across the Pennines connecting northern cities – now amounts to a series of smaller local investments. In his Convention speech, Shadow Secretary, Kevin Hollinrake, expressed disappointment that the Sunak administration had abandoned its original NPR commitment and restated his support for the scheme.
Although local transport improvements are needed, without the transformative investment that schemes like HS2 and NPR represented the North will continue to be at “economic disadvantage” compared with other parts of the country, said Mayor Andy Burnham.
Takeaway 4: Tackling health inequalities is also essential for northern growth
Convention 2025 set out proposals for a new northern growth model, focused both on opportunities where the North can drive the UK economy forward, and reform to address long-standing structural challenges, including infrastructure, skills, and health.
According to research by the Northern Health Science Alliance (NHSA), health inequalities in the North cost UK plc £13.2 billion a year in lost productivity, as well as limiting individuals’ life chances.
At the Convention last Friday, the NHSA launched its proposal for a new national Institute for Preventative Research to be based in the North, which was backed by northern leaders as one of their “five gamechangers” and voted the top gamechanger by those in the Convention hall.
As South Yorkshire Mayor, Oliver Coppard, highlighted, the North produces significant world-class health and life science research, but this isn’t being properly used to improve northerners’ health outcomes. The NHSA proposals aim to address that: harnessing clinical research and innovation to address long-term health challenges in the North.
Although health has been a discussion point at previous Conventions, this was the year when it became a focal point, which is both welcome and timely.
Last year we supported Health Innovation Yorkshire and Humber, Yorkshire Universities, and the NHS Confederation to produce and launch a white paper, which found that place-based approaches, responding to local needs, are the best way of tackling health inequalities while also boosting local growth.
With strategic authorities poised to have a greater role in supporting health in their localities, working alongside Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) and other partners, the North has a real opportunity to develop new ways of working that effect change, not just for the economy, but for people.
Takeaway 5: Mayors are in the driving seat, but they need to embrace broader partnership working
Deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, used her Convention speech to reiterate the Government’s position that mayors are their preferred model for devolution.
With the North due to have eight mayors from this May and 10 from 2026 (plus potentially one in Lancashire in the not too distant future…), the region’s future is firmly in mayoral hands.
However, what really sets the Convention of the North apart is the passion, energy, and ambition for the North among delegates across a broad range of sectors – not just politicians.
This represents a powerful coalition that mayors can and should tap into.
With the public purse facing sustained, long-term pressure, the true power of the mayoral model resides in mayors’ convening power, rather than their spending power.
The Government’s growth mission will only be delivered in partnership, and that is what the Convention of the North is all about – bringing together people from across the North to collaborate for the good of the region. It has become a landmark event in the political and business calendar – one that puts the North in the national spotlight like no other and creates a forum for those interested in the North’s future to connect and collaborate.
As mayors’ proposals for a new “Great North” partnership develop, it will be important to build on the momentum generated by the Convention of the North in successive years, marrying the formal powers devolved to mayors with the determination of business, university and civil society leaders to play their parts in helping the North succeed.
As the 2024 and 2025 Convention Co-Chair, Clare Hayward, said in her powerful opening speech: “Those of us in this room today have the ability to control and influence the North’s future. There is nobody else going to do it for us.”
By Racheal Johnson, Director