Diana Wallis: When will politicians fly the flag for Yorkshire?

I SPENT this summer holiday based at my home in the East Riding taking the time to travel around our region for pleasure, rather than, as usually happen, for meetings.

One thing I have been struck by is the growing number of Yorkshire flags I see as I travel across the region. Individual homes, and also businesses across Yorkshire, increasingly seem to be flying the White Rose flag.

And not just here either. When Alistair Brownlee of Leeds won the London leg of the World Championship Triathlon Series recently he crossed the finishing line draped in the Yorkshire flag.

It was the same earlier this month when he was crowned world champion in China. There can be no doubting the strong sense of identity which we have in Yorkshire.

One of the reasons I have always been a Liberal Democrat is because of the party’s stance on devolution and regionalism.

Whether it be in Scotland, Wales or the English regions, the Liberal Democrats have long been committed to a democratic and devolved political system.

The vogue now is something called “localism” where things are taken down to local council level, something of which Liberal Democrats would be generally supportive.

Regionalism, by contrast, is seen as outmoded and unpopular – perhaps not surprisingly given the dreadfully botched job the Labour government did on democratic regional governance and, in turn, to the cause of Yorkshire.

The trouble for me is that every day of my working life I represent a region – this region – in the European Parliament.

This is not some sort of out dated anachronism. It may be an inconvenient truth but it is a reality and one I am immensely proud of.

Our region, to paraphrase Bishop Eric Treacy, is “a country in miniature”; we have a bit of everything.

What we don’t have however, is any level of autonomy from Westminster where all policy, economic and otherwise, is still set and is largely based on what suits London and the south-east of England.

We are different in the North and that needs to be recognised.

Of course, recent political history is strewn with various attempts at acknowledging the regional perspective, some better than others.

As deputy leader on the new East Riding Council, I recall attending the first meetings of the Yorkshire and Humber “Assembly” in the mid-1990s. It all seemed very exciting, but the reality, of course, was that most councillors had enough to do in their own local patch without getting involved in some unwieldy and uncertain regional structure.

Then we had Yorkshire Forward.

No-one can question its success in getting inward investment into the region, but democratically accountable it was not. Many saw it as little more than an expensive quango.

Perhaps this was true; maybe it could have been retained but restructured. Sadly we weren’t given the choice and instead of reform it was abolished.

In the last government, a Minister for Yorkshire was created, and, credit where it is due, they did form a link and point of contact to the heart of government.

Now we have cash-strapped local authorities scrabbling to form local LEPs, every city for itself and no clear Yorkshire champion at Westminster. It is a sad situation.

I have always believed our region deserved better.

Right across the road from the European Parliament in Brussels is a smart building occupied by the representation of the German State of Bavaria.

Maybe that is over the top, but it serves to make my point so often underlined in the Yorkshire Post, that we, in Yorkshire and the Humber are missing out.

We are failing to punch our real weight not only in the world at large, but even in our own country.

At the Liberal Democrat conference in Birmingham Nick Clegg, has faced calls from party activists who want a better and fairer deal for the North of England.

He now needs to recognise that the North is different and that he, as Deputy Prime Minister and also as a Sheffield MP, must be willing to consider different structures for how we go about things here.

Yorkshire is a hugely successful and growing brand. One only needs to thumb through the Yellow Pages to see just how many companies use Yorkshire in their name.

The commercial and business sector realises the value of the Yorkshire brand; when will the political sector reflect the same level of ambition?