Chancellor Rachel Reeves needs to give clarity over Hitachi

For every day since she took her post as Chancellor, she will have had a hundred meetings, read a thousand letters and emails and listened to scores of impassioned pleadings from people who see her as their last chance.

From the comfort of the Opposition benches where Keir Starmer’s team only had to ridicule and draw attention to failure to win votes, the moment has arrived where her statesmanship will be on show for the first time.

The Budget has come too soon for her to do enough to keep everyone happy – so we eagerly await her priorities.

What do I have to do NOW.

What injustices, errors, mistakes and miscalculations do I have to correct without a moment’s hesitation.

What will I never be forgiven for if it isn’t mentioned in the next hour.

And, of course, what will bring in the most money to fill the black hole that has been providing obfuscation for my plans for quite long enough.

Hitachi at Newton Aycliffe (Image: Hitachi)

If years of campaigning and support haven’t made it clear enough, let us at The Northern Echo spell it out in seven letters. Hitachi.

It is so disgracefully wrong that workers at Newton Aycliffe will be gathered around TV screens to find out their fate. The message that Government delay has sent out to global investors who had started to turn their focus to this unmatched region will be difficult to recover from.

But the right Budget message can do it. It has the power to be the game-changer.

There are many people whose take on this will be that our own regionalised industrial strategy – drawn up live each day with every conversation and handshake - was all going well. And then the Government got involved.

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Rachel Reeves has the chance to unequivocably dismiss that misconception and make crystal clear the Government’s responsibilities in this region and, hopefully through her own elusive Industrial Strategy, set out a long-term vision for what we could do together. Regional insight, passion and potential teamed with power and support from the Government is the collaboration we will all applaud.

The Echo has loyally carried every suggestion of wheels turning and negotiations being on the right track for Hitachi, and we have written with passion and barely-contained anger many times about our own theories and disbelief that this isn’t already fixed.

Throughout, we have been amazed and so impressed by the patience of senior Hitachi staff who have used every ounce of their political awareness to keep everybody happy while – I’m sure – screaming into their hands “JUST TELL US”.

Hitachi at Newton Aycliffe (Image: Hitachi)

Now our new Chancellor has her moment in history in which she can show her deep understanding of what devolution means from the viewpoint of hundreds of people on Millennium Way. It’s not a political strategy, a tool to be used and then discarded, a simple vote-winner or the buck being passed to the Mayors.

As we have shown time and again, devolution has become our way of life here. We have pleaded for the ability to make our own decisions and we have been given it and we have prospered.

So the idea that the power to advance and not only save but grow one of the jewels in our crown could be out of our hands is a little short of tragic. Suddenly we can’t decide, we just have to watch. And hope that the new hope, the new chancellor, understands us and doesn’t just know where we are on a map.

It is probably too much to ask that her first announcement will be ‘I’m going to secure the future of the Hitachi plant at Newton Aycliffe’. But we expect clarity – be bold enough to say yes or no clearly and she will gain some respect, if not votes.

She – under her boss’s guidance, of course - has her fingers on the one lever we can’t reach and until the very last hour she will be balancing advice on which way to go.

She may not even mention the word Hitachi, still feeling obliged to look as if she isn’t intervening directly but the word that matters is her own.

Believe in what we can do here, Chancellor, and we will amaze you.