Unemployment in the North East now stands at 12 per cent, whereas in the South East, the rate is only 6.4 per cent.  The North East also suffers from the highest rate of economic activity, the lowest rate of employment and the highest claimant count (which is more than double the rate in the South East).

Of course, politicians since the war have talked about minimising the North-South divide, but the rhetoric has seldom been matched by results.  As I argued in The Guardian a few months ago, the creation of public sector jobs in places such as my home town as Consett did help to alleviate the economic devastation of unemployment.

Nevertheless, the growth of the public sector was only a short term solution and left many towns at risk when Government decided that it had to cut spending (and all three parties went into the last election committed to spending cuts).  As pertinently, even after the boom in public sector jobs, the North-South divide in terms of GDP per head, unemployment and worklessness remained as stubborn as ever.

It’s imperative that more is done to create jobs and tackle unemployment in the North.  Although public sector jobs are important and valuable, private sector job creation is crucial for the North to have sustainable growth and sustainable jobs in the future.

Although concepts such as the Regional Growth Fund and Local Enterprise Partnerships represent a step in the right direction, it’s clear that more must be done to create sustainable jobs in the North.  When Government is making major infrastructure decisions, it should consider how these investment decisions can help regenerate the North.  At the same time, the Government should be considering the impact of National Pay Bargaining and an anti development planning system on the North.

Just as the North-South economic divide remains as stubbornly wide as ever, so does the political divide.  A map of England shows that England has become hugely polarised, with Conservatives dominating most of the South and Labour most of the North.  As I have said on Platform 10, the Tories must develop a Northern strategy to help turn around their long term decline in the North.

But the issue goes beyond party politics.  It is an even bigger issue if parts of the country feel that the Government doesn’t understand the North and people in the North feel that they aren’t being adequately represented or listened to.  There’s no Minister for the North East, for example, in the Government and there are no North Eastern MPs or peers in either the Cabinet or the Shadow Cabinet.

All political parties need to be addressing the important question of how to narrow the economic and political North – South divide.

2012 is also shaping up to be quite a vintage year for political books and biographies, particularly with Robert Caro’s long awaited fourth volume of the life of LBJ (with a fifth also on the way).

1.       Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

The finale of another great series about another great President.  Following on from ‘The Rise Of Theodore Roosevelt’ and ‘Theodore Rex’, this magisterial work takes the Teddy Roosevelt story on from when he left office in 2009.  And Roosevelt is unique amongst US Presidents for being as interesting for what he did after leaving office as he is for what he did in office.  When Taft succeeded him as President in 2009, Roosevelt quickly believed that his legacy was being squandered.  His 2010 Kansas speech launched Roosevelt’s most progressive, radical phase and left him on a collision course with Taft and much of the GOP.

With the speech, he launched one of the most fascinating phases in American politics.  Roosevelt joined the Republican primaries for 2012, but he joined them too late and Taft became the GOP nominee.  He then formed the Progressive Party, commonly known as Bull Moose, which went on to push the Republicans and Taft into third place.  And this book has plenty of contemporary relevance – President Obama gave one of his best speeches for some time in the same town in which Teddy Roosevelt launched his more progressive agenda.  Roosevelt used his populist campaign to campaign for the interests of “the people” against “the powerful” – arguing that both the Democrats and the Republicans had become dominated by the interests of big business, rather than the interests of the people.  Such a concept has a huge amount of resonance today.  Expect Obama to go back to the populist source in this year’s election.  This book is a must read about an extraordinary man, whose people versus powerful message can teach us a great deal today.

2.       Chavs – The Demonisation of the Working Class by Owen Jones

Owen Jones’s work about social class has come in for justified high praise, from the New York Times to Eric Hobsbawm.  And the book deserves the high praise.  I reviewed ‘Chavs’ back in July and described it back then as:

 “a highly readable and very important book.  Although, as he suggests himself, Jones is from a middle-class background, he does understand and address many of the big issues facing working class communities.  The book correctly addresses the marginalisation of many working class people from political life (just look at turnout figures for lower income social groups as confirmation of this).  It has helped to ignite a debate about how to bridge the gulf between Westminster and working class communities and how to best turn round those areas most affected by the blight of unemployment and deindustrialisation.”

For too long, it has suited both left and right to ignore class and to ignore the crucial issues around class.  As politics has become more professional and more and more middle class, working class concerns have fewer voices in the upper echelons.  Jones has helped ensure that a new debate has been created on the subject.  It’s a lively and very good book and, whether you agree with Owen Jones’s politics or not (as I pointed out when I reviewed it, Chavs is more pointing out problems than suggesting solutions), it is well worth a read.

3.       Adapt by Tim Harford

 Not strictly a political book but a book that is having a real political impact.  In this book, Harford extols the virtues of experimentation, of risk-taking and, crucially, failure.  As the book’s subtitle suggests, success always starts with failure.  Tim Harford also spoke about the book at Policy Exchange and I blogged about the event here.  The importance of his ideas are multiple.  Namely, that local trial and error are good things and we shouldn’t expect a monopoly of wisdom from central government or anywhere else.  Equally, prizes could be a particularly effective way of bringing about innovation.

4.       You Can’t Say That by Ken Livingstone  

There are few more interesting politicians than ‘Red Ken’.  Lovingly described as “the most odious man in Britain” by The Sun, Livingstone emerged from battles with Thatcher’s Government, the law Lords and Tony Blair and ongoing battles with the Evening Standard to become the first elected Mayor of London.  Ken is one of the lone survivors of the politics of the 1980s and has quite a tale to tell.  And he tells the tale in some detail.  It’s open to question whether we need to hear the near verbatim diary of his hitchhiking trip to Africa as a young man or plenty of internal Labour of GLC committee meetings in the 1970s.  Having said that, there are some great sparks and some great humour in this book which is much more compelling than most examples of the genre.

Ken is a marmite politician (I find, amongst other things, the links with Chavez pretty distasteful).  But controversial, marmite politicians are good in an age of soundbites.  You may not agree with what he says, but you have to respect the fact that he’s one of the few genuinely working class politicians at the front line today and you have to respect that the support for gay and ethnic minority communities for which he was lambasted in the 1980s has now become mainstream.  A politician who provokes strong emotions on both sides, his autobiography is a worthwhile read for anybody interested in British politics of recent decades.

5.       Tory Pride and Prejudice by Michael McManus

 It’s only a decade or so since front bench Conservatives were openly supporting Section 28 and others were using offensive language about reducing the age of consent and other key issues.  In only a few years, the Tory Party changed from being a party portrayed as being anti gay to being the party with more openly gay MPs than any other.  It’s a pretty radical and hugely welcome change, accompanied by a much needed mea culpa or two along the way.  This fascinating book charts the attitude of the Conservatives towards homosexual law reform from the crackdown in the 1950s through to the welcome approach of this Government, with its support for gay marriage (which was announced shortly after the book went to print).  There’s some great anecdotes here as well – the book is a fascinating illustration of the changing nature of the Tory Party and the changing nature of society (very much for the better).

Today there are around 91,500 people in the UK infected by HIV.  According to the HPA, “The annual number of infections acquired within the UK… has almost doubled [between]…2001 [and]…2010, and exceeds the proportion probably acquired abroad.”  More than 3,000 gay men were diagnosed with HIV last year – the highest ever annual figure.  10-in-11 gay men in London, and 1-in-20 nationwide,  are living with the virus. 

Just as infection rates are reaching new highs, awareness is dipping alarmingly.  1 in 5 people who attend sexual health clinics turn down an HIV test and half of the 6,600 cases of HIV diagnosed last year were diagnosed after drug treatment should have started. 

World Aids Day should be a way of raising awareness.  At the moment, it’s failing to do this.  I work in central London and have only seen a handful of people wearing the ribbons today.  According to the World Aids Day site, ribbons are available in ‘MAC stores’.  Why aren’t they being sold in the big supermarkets, newsagents, bookshops and chemists?  If we are serious about raising awareness, we should be serious about raising awareness beyond the already aware. 

Public policy has a big role to play.    Policy makers need to consider reforms that will ensure that those most at risk are tested and need to recognise that the danger of HIV is as large today as it was in the 1980s.  A Unicef report showed that knowledge of HIV and Aids amongst young people in particular has declined and that many people have difficulty accessing sexual health services, experiencing difficulty making appointments and long waiting times.

The ‘Don’t Die Of Ignorance’ marketing campaign was one of the most powerful advertising campaigns of recent decades.  It was shown in every commercial break.  So many people still remember it today.  Two decades on, awareness has fallen and ignorance has risen.  The work done by the powerful advert has gone into reverse.  It’s clear that raising awareness of both the risk of HIV and the availability of testing is particularly important today.

The statistics for HIV amongst gay men are particularly shocking and some of the pressure groups also have a real awareness raising role to play.  A survey for gay professional networking group ‘Jake’ showed a hugely worrying amount of unprotected and casual sex amongst the gay community in London.  Of the 1,500 people who responded to their survey, 48 per cent said they had unprotected sex with strangers and barely half had been tested for HIV over the past year.  Gay pressure groups, such as Stonewall, which have done such tremendous work pushing the gay rights agenda over recent decades, have a responsibility to help turn around the rise in HIV amongst gay men.

Today should be a real day for awareness raising and should mark the moment when policy makers, pressure groups and health professionals take stock of recent trends in HIV cases and consider new measures to tackle the disease.  They should be considering ways to improve awareness, prevention and access to testing and ensuring that the problem is seriously addressed. 

David Skelton is Deputy Director of Policy Exchange.  You can follow him on Twitter @djskelton

“It’s not an exclusive definition, the battler is somebody who finds in life that they have to work hard for everything they get… normally you then look at it in terms of somebody who’s not earning a huge income but somebody who is trying to better themselves, and I’ve always been attracted to people who try to better themselves.”

That was how John Howard defined his concept of the “battlers”.   The concept was crucial to helping him build an electoral coalition that enabled his Liberal Party to win four straight elections.  Howard succeeded in standing for what we Brits would call the “strivers”.

He built his electoral victories on attracting the upwardly mobile working class – making clear that he was “one of them” and understood their needs and concerns.  A “Howard battler” was a working class voter, who had traditionally voted Labor, but shifted to the Liberals based on the belief that John Howard’s party was standing up for them and understood their concerns.

The slogan for his first election victory in 1996 was “for all of us” – setting out in pretty clear terms that his party was a national party, rather than a sectional party.  Howard’s success was built on the idea that the centre right could not just rely on its traditional base of support, extending his coalition to include working class voters, trade unionists and public sector workers.  For John Howard, gaining the blue collar vote was an essential part of electoral success.

The modern British Conservative Party has much to learn from John Howard.

The Conservative Party in the UK is the only centre right party in the English speaking world that cannot rely on a sizeable amount of the blue collar vote.  In 1996, in Australia, the Liberals got a higher proportion of the blue collar vote than Labor.  In the US, the Republicans have a fairly consistent lead amongst white, working class voters (that lead was as high as 23 per cent in 2004).

In the UK, by contrast, the Conservatives have failed to make anything close to a breakthrough in the blue collar vote.  Despite almost perfect electoral conditions at the last election, David Cameron’s party only gained 37 per cent of the votes of skilled manual workers.  Neither party was able to successfully relate to the “battlers” in Britain at the last election, which is a major reason for the inconclusive result.

AT present, the Conservatives have the problem that they lack empathy with blue collar voters – a problem that Howard never had a problem with.  A part of his electoral genius was that he was able to empathise with blue collar voters, as well as offering both determined leadership and reassurance.  It did, of course, help a great deal that he had policies that resonated particularly well with working class voters.

John Howard gave a speech at a Policy Exchange lunch today, in which he reminded people in a very powerful speech why he was such a successful electoral force.

If they are to govern lone after the next election, the Conservative Party will need to take a leaf from John Howard’s book and consider ways to appeal to the British “battlers” and aspirational blue collar voters.

It was a fascinating and hugely entertaining event, which got many in the audience thinking about what Harford said means for both the pursuit of growth and for public policy overall.

One of Harford’s big messages is that trial and error, risk and accepting that the potential for failure is a key part of risk is a central means of innovation.  Innovation is impossible without risk taking, risk taking cannot be imposed from the top and risk taking is not risk taking if there is no possibility of failure.

And we should take heed of that message.  Trial and error should never be undervalued in both private business and the development of public policy.  However, as Harford pointed out, if we are to embrace trial; and error in policy making, we also have to be better at measuring outcomes and measuring  whether or not something is working.  To give one example, local pilots are all too regularly held with too little information being collected about their success.

Another message was about the effectiveness of ‘prizes’ in bringing about innovation and change.  Harford suggested that, in many cases, Government is better off incentivising the private sector and innovators than in trying to “pick winners”.  Prizes operate as a far more powerful incentive for innovators than traditional research grants.  Harford pointed to several examples, such as the Gates Foundation prize,  as examples of where prizes have already made a difference.

There is little doubt that prizes are going to play an increasingly important role in the years ahead – particularly as Governments look to solve seemingly intractable problems.

Diversity and risk taking are going to be crucial as the UK looks to encourage innovation and growth over the next few decades.  Companies that are prepared to take risks tend to be the most successful in today’s economy.  The companies and organisations that rest on their laurels lack the energy to take risks and encourage trial and error are those that are likely to stagnate.

Both the public and private sectors have much to learn from Harford’s new book.

It is remarkable to consider that only a few decades ago, the Conservatives still had a major presence in many major Northern cities.  Liverpool was, at times, a Conservative stronghold.  Leeds and Manchester both had considerable Conservative representation.  Up until 1987, Newcastle had several Conservative MPs.

Now, in all of those cities, voting Conservative has effectively become counter cultural.  Great cities in the North, such as Liverpool (once a bastion of working class Toryism), Manchester and Liverpool don’t have a single Conservative on their Councils.   The Conservatives have been pushed back to third place in a number of parliamentary seats that they actually held a couple of decades ago.  Despite making some inroads at the last election, the North remains a largely Tory free zone.

Becoming a marginal actor in many parts of the North (with an even starker collapse in Scotland) has made it considerably more difficult for the Conservatives to win an overall majority.  A decline in the Tory voted in the North and Scotland has had an inevitable knock-on effect on their national vote share.  Harold Macmillan polled 49.4% of the vote in 1959, compared to John Major’s 41.9% and David Cameron’s 36%.  If the Party cannot turn around their Northern decline, the Conservatives will face an uphill fight as they look to govern alone after 2015.

There is little evidence that any corner is being turned by the Conservatives in the North as a result of the coalition.  A You Gov poll on 25^th October, which gives Ed Miliband’s party a lead of 4% nationally, gives Labour a commanding 29% lead in the North.  Some 69% of people polled in the North disapprove of the Government’s record to date – that is considerably higher than in any other part of the UK.

Is it possible for the Conservatives to turn the situation around in the North?  What do they have to do to move from being a party dominated by the South of England and part of the Midlands to being a truly national party again?  It is clear that efforts in recent years have made little headway and that steps must be taken beyond merely beefing up campaigning operations and seeing the North as an appendage to a national campaign.

One of the main elements of Conservative modernisation was that the party should put themselves in a position where the party gained position, from the voters, to be listened to.  Whilst that permission has been granted from voters outside of the North, it seems that many in the North are still refusing to countenance listening to Conservatives.  And the Tories must take steps to change that.

A start would be for Conservatives to acknowledge the historical reasons that have created a cultural anti Toryism in many Northern cities, towns and villages.  Many in the North still associate Conservatives with deindustrialisation, unemployment and the social problems that followed in their wake.  Memories of the Miner’s Strike and subsequent pit closures still provoke anti Toryism in certain parts of the North, with some regarding the Conservatives  as uncaring and enabling Labour to label the Tories as the “party of unemployment.”

A realisation from Conservative politicians that, whilst economic changes were necessary, social consequences of those changes damaged communities and social cohesion.  Whilst Conservatives have issued a mea culpa around policies towards gay people and some other groups, gaining them greater credibility within those communities, they have still to address discontent in the North with the social consequences of policies in the 80s and 90s.

Conservative strategists also need to consider addressing the fact that, despite a series of changes, the Conservative Party still looks and sounds like a Southern party.  Despite the presence of Yorkshiremen, William Hague and Eric Pickles, in the Cabinet, the Government still has a gilded, mainly Southern feel.   This Southern feel could partly be ascribed to the Conservatives retreating to their South Eastern base during much of the past two decades.

Polls show that the Conservatives are still viewed as a “party of the rich”  – this perception is particularly damaging in many parts of the North.  To address this perception, which continues to hold the Party back electorally, the Conservatives must look to broaden their social base, so that people in the North can relate to people representing the Party.  It is crucial that the Government is able to put up spokesmen and women who people in the North can identify with and who can relate to their personal experience.

The Government can also take proactive policy steps to turn around their decline in the North.  It needs to make clear that it understands that the North has unique problems (parts of the North suffer using most economic, public health and education metrics), which require unique solutions.  An added headache for Conservatives is that the North is more dependent than other parts of the country on public sector jobs and, as such, is likely to be impacted most by public spending cuts.

This means that the Government’s efforts on delivering growth and creating private sector jobs must be redoubled in the North and the Conservatives must go out of their way to emphasise particular steps being taken to build infrastructure and create jobs in the North.  They must make clear that they aren’t prepared to accept high unemployment and are taking real measures to encourage the private sector and job creation.   Measures to reform welfare, enhance state education, cut energy bills and rebalance the economy will also play well with lower and middle income earners in the North.

For some in the Conservative Party, the North still represents an electoral no go area.  However, such a view leaves the party hamstrung and facing an uphill electoral climb at each election.  They have struggled for a variety of reasons, historical, social and economic, but they should not accept that continuing to struggle in the North is inevitable.  The Conservatives must do more to properly address reasons for past poor performance in the North and set out positive reasons for Northern voters to back the party.

Indeed, the Liberal Democrats have already claimed credit for policies such as the abolition of ID cards and the pupil premium (an idea developed by Policy Exchange), which were actually in the manifestoes of both parties.  Lib Dems claimed that it was their influence that resulted in the ‘Listening Exercise’ and the watering down of the proposed NHS reforms (despite Nick Clegg putting his name to the original proposals).   They also claim to be holding the Tories back from making deeper cuts in public services and cutting the 50p tax rate.

The Tory side of the coalition need to be very wary about this.  Despite coming to something of a halt in around 2008, the Tory modernisation process did, to an extent, change people’s perception of the Party.  It at least gave the Conservatives permission to be listened to, as well as softening their message and broadening the Conservative focus.  It also allowed Tories, for the first time in a generation, to emphasise the progressive elements of their political heritage.

Liberals claiming the credit for progressive reforms imperils that process.  Their message is basically that, without the Lib Dem brake and an injection of Liberal progressivism, this would have been a typical, right wing Tory Government.  The argument over health reforms has also served to retoxify the Tory brand on the NHS (always an Achilles heel, which was neutralised by the process of modernisation) and the Conservatives would be ill advised to sacrifice gains made in other areas.

The narrative of the “nice Lib Dems”  reining back the “ruthless Tories” could be damaging to the Tories in 2015.  Any suggestion that the Conservatives would have governed  in a more old-style, right wing and less progressive way, without a Lib Dem brake, could have a real impact on their electoral chances in 2015.

The importance of considering this threat was illustrated by a Populus poll which showed that the majority of people still believe that the Conservatives are a “party for the rich, not for ordinary people.”  To counter this threat, Conservatives need to keep emphasising their own progressive policies (why was gay marriage launched at the Liberal conference and not in the Rose Garden, for example) and make sure that the Tory brand remains detoxified and linked to progressive causes.

The second really notable element was the booing of Tony Blair’s name.  A pretty remarkable moment for a party to boo the name of a man who transformed a party which had slumped to four successive defeats into one that won three successive victories.  Blair understood that elections are won on the centre ground and in doing that, he not only pulled the Labour Party to the centre but also had the added effect of pulling the Conservatives to the centre ground as well.  In building a remarkable election winning machine, Blair understood the importance of Labour appealing outside its comfort zone.  There was little of that in Ed Miliband’s speech yesterday.

Tony Blair famously said that, “there’s only one tradition I hated: losing.  I hated the 1980s not just for our irrelevance but for our revelling in irrelevance.”  He understood the importance of building a broad based electoral coalition, based on a reputation for moderation, credibility and competence.  This electorally successful coalition is built on the centre ground and based on the party being perceived as a national, not sectional party.   Too much of Miliband’s speech yesterday was sectional, rather than national – aimed at the hall rather than the nation.  Sectionalism is not how elections are won.  Perhaps those delegates who booed Blair’s name should reflect on the fact that, by the time of the next election, it will have been 49 years since a Labour leader other than Tony Blair won a fully working overall majority at a general election.

The third fascinating element was Miliband’s description of himself as an outsider.  When politicians look to label themselves, they should at least seek to do it in a credible way.  With the unpopularity of political, media and financial elites, there is a strong political argument for somebody standing as an outsider against those elites.  A people versus powerful figure could make a big contribution to the debate.

But it is very difficult to see how Ed Miliband could credibly be labeled as an outsider.  As the son of a Socialist academic who regularly had Labour cabinet Ministers as house guests when he was growing up, Miliband had doors open for him that would not have been the case for people from working class backgrounds.  The path from Oxford and Harvard, through working in Westminster and then becoming an adviser to Gordon Brown was not the path of an outsider.  It was the path of an insider.  It is difficult to describe Ed Miliband’s career as anything other than an insider’s advance.

Labour must remember that their election result last year was even worse than that in 1931 – it was their second worst performance since 1918.  Labour’s vote amongst the skilled working class was the lowest since the war.  This realisation should have inspired Ed Miliband to build an electoral coalition on the centre ground.  Yesterday’s speech suggests that Labour still has a long way to go to learn the lessons of Tony Blair’s success.

David Skelton is Deputy Director of Policy Exchange.

You can follow him on Twitter @djskelton

This piece also appeared at www.totalpolitics.com

It’s a very welcome announcement indeed.

The case for gay marriage is clear and it is great news that the Government seems to be ready to accept the case. Same sex marriage is already legal in Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, South Africa, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Portugal and a number of American states (including, most recently, New York). Despite the dire warnings of anti gay marriage activists, the sky hasn’t fallen in in any of those countries and the family unit seems as strong as ever. Now is the right time for the UK to join that list.

The argument for gay marriage on pure equality lines is pretty clear cut. It is unjustifiable in modern Britain that a reasonable section of the population are denied the right to marry their partner. That is an inequality that needs to be put right.

But there’s also a little noted argument for gay marriage on family values grounds. Although anti same-sex marriage campaigners have attempted to don the cloak of family values, it’s about time that those of us who support gay marriage started to make the family values case for gay marriage. People are right to emphasise the importance of the institution of marriage. They are right to emphasise the importance of the family as a bedrock of society and a source of stability and guidance.

The issue that many same sex marriage opponents on the right (and some on the left) can’t address is – if marriage and the family are so beneficial and are of such strong cultural importance, why are they determined to deny the benefits of them to LGBT people?

An argument that some use against same sex marriage is that civil partnerships represent marriage in all but name. It is true that civil partnerships represent a genuine social advance and Tony Blair should be highly praised for introducing the reforms. There is also a high level of support for civil partnerships. However, they aren’t the same as marriage. Civil partnerships are important but they don’t represent equality and, in terms of perception and some pension and other financial issues, they aren’t equal to marriage.

Opponents who claim to speak for a “silent majority” of the public would also be well advised to look at public opinion polls on the matter. A recent survey showed that 77% of people support either gay marriage or civil partnerships (43% supported gay marriage, 34% civic unions). Another poll for Populus showed that 61% supported the statement that “gay couples should have an equal right to get married, not just civil partnerships.”

The likes of Melanie Phillips and Roger Helmer will continue to make a lot of noise. But, thankfully, they are on the wrong side of history. We are rapidly moving towards a landscape of genuine equality – where any couple who love each other and want to make a lifestyle commitment to each other are allowed to marry. And our country will be a better place because of it.

At the same time, the England cricket team capped a remarkable turnaround.   From being the bottom ranked test playing nation in 1999, Andrew Strauss’s team were crowned the world’s top test nation only eleven years later following a crushing victory over India.  The win happened at Egbaston, only a few miles from the Winston Green area of Birmingham, which suffered so much devastation and tragedy.

Surely now is the time to harness the power of sporting success, such as that of the England cricket team, to help re-engage young people and ensure that the kind of violence that we saw earlier this month doesn’t happen again.  There are numerous examples of how sport has been used as an instrument to provide focus and meaning to lives previously devoid of both.

Sport generally, and cricket in particular,  has displayed an extraordinary capacity to transform lives.  The tremendous ‘Fire In Babylon’ showed how cricket helped bring real pride and determination to an otherwise poverty stricken West Indies in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.  You only need to look at the scenes in the film from Brixton and Vauxhall after the West Indies’ routing of England in 1984 to see the way that cricket has helped pull some of the communities most affected by the disorder together in the past.

Examples from South Africa, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh illustrate the transformative power of sport.  There’s even an example of former Compton gang members in the States who have seen cricket as their salvation.  Boxing and football have also given people a route out of poverty and, in some cases, rescued people from a life of gang culture and crime.  Sport not only provides real focus – it also instils the importance of discipline and teamwork.  In many cases, sport can enable people to be proud of their achievements, providing a sense of self worth and engagement with society that had previously been missing.

Policy makers need to consider how sport can be used more effectively as a force for the good in deprived areas.  Sport in schools is particularly important, but there is also more that can be done to provide the right facilities to harness the power of sport.  It’s unbelievably that Brixton, for example, rich in cricketing culture from both the Caribbean and England, has only one cricket pitch – the Oval.

Government has a big role to play in this, but so do employers and philanthropists (the cricket and football clubs in the North East were often built and kept up by the local mine of steelworks).  Perhaps now is the time for more of the richest people in society to give a little back by giving philanthropic donations to help build sports facilities for some of the poorest in society.  Some of the richest in society should be encouraged to give money towards exciting sporting projects, funding cricket and football pitches, boxing academies, BMX and bike tracks and so on that would give a new lease of life to some deprived areas.

Nobody is suggesting that sport is some kind of panacea for social ills.  However, it does have an important part to play.  Time and time again, the transformative effect of sport in poorer communities has been clear for all to see.  We should use the fact that England are now the world’s number one cricket team to inspire young people from deprived backgrounds and help reengage many young people in society.

This post has also appeared at www.huffingtonpost.co.uk