Dan Jarvis: ‘They said One Yorkshire couldn’t happen but now it’s within reach’

While Dan Jarvis doesn’t have much in common with pro-Brexit campaigners, they do have one similarity. The Labour MP for Barnsley Central has thrown himself behind a cause that is not being taken seriously in Westminster but which he believes is within touching distance.

Calls for devolution of power from central government to the historic county of Yorkshire, creating a combined authority of 5.3 million people and “the most significant entity outside of London” have, he says, routinely been snorted at and disparaged. But the One Yorkshire proposals now have the backing of 18 of Yorkshire’s 20 local authorities, the Confederation of British Industry, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Institute of Directors and the TUC.

“There has been this attitude among many establishment figures that it was never going to happen. ‘You’re wasting your time’, ‘We will never draw Yorkshire and the Humber together’,” he says. “Well, they’re not saying that now.”

Last Thursday Jarvis – a former army major who was once tipped for Labour leader – was shortlisted to be the party’s mayoral candidate for Sheffield city region. Voting among party members for a candidate in the May election starts on Friday, and the result will be announced on 23 March.

However, the matter of a Sheffield mayor is controversial. Failure by the region’s constituent local authorities to reach agreement means the position so far has no agreed salary, no agreed powers and no agreed budget. Initial plans to devolve powers over infrastructure investment, transport, skills and housing, plus a budget of £900m over 30 years, were agreed in 2015. That agreement has since disintegrated.

In December a community poll in Barnsley and Doncaster found that about 85% of voters preferred the wider One Yorkshire devolution proposals, leaving just Sheffield and Rotherham fully supportive of the Sheffield city region plans. Despite this, the government has insisted on pushing ahead with a mayoral election. Jarvis’s pitch to Labour members in the region is by his own admission a “convoluted” one. He proposes to work to secure the best possible interim deal for the people of the Sheffield city region, with a view to eventually overseeing its absorption into a devolved wider Yorkshire authority.

Jarvis warns that if the region’s new mayor doesn’t wholeheartedly back devolution for the county as a whole, One Yorkshire may never happen.

“There is a strong sense of belonging and identification with the concept of Yorkshire,” says Jarvis, sitting in a cafe overlooking Sheffield’s winter gardens. “No one will ever go to a football or rugby match and shout ‘Sheffield city region’ but they will shout for Yorkshire because that’s something they feel is important, that matters and that they identify with.

“I believe that as a subregion, and part of the north of England that was economically devastated in the 1980s, the best way to provide resilience [for the Sheffield city region] against the potential challenges of Brexit is to put something meaningful in place that will allow us to cooperate andcompete with other parts of the country and other parts of the world. I think our ability to do that is much greater with the combined clout of the mass that is Yorkshire and the Humber.”

While the government previously dismissed the idea that the whole of Yorkshire could have a devolution settlement, insisting it would not support any proposal that jeopardised the Sheffield deal, it has now agreed in principle that a “two-stage” solution could work – with the Sheffield city region reaching an initial deal, and later joining with a wider Yorkshire agreement.

“The reason that the government wants to force through a Sheffield city region deal is for naked political reasons,” says Jarvis.

“They don’t want Labour-dominated South Yorkshire to pollute their electoral prospects in the rest of Yorkshire.”

Also vying to be Labour’s candidate for the role in south Yorkshire is local councillor and solicitor Ben Curran.

Though Jarvis says his emphatic support for a wider Yorkshire deal sets him apart from his rivals, Curran has also agreed in principle that the Sheffield city region deal could act as a stepping stone to devolution to the whole county.

If he is elected mayor of the Sheffield city region in May, Jarvis says he would not take a salary and would not stand down as MP. He points to the prime minster, cabinet ministers and shadow cabinet as examples of MPs who have other major political responsibilities.

So is Jarvis following in the footsteps of Greater Manchester mayor and former shadow home secretary Andy Burnham, and looking to regional politics because he is unlikely to progress on a national level in a Corbyn-led Labour party?

“No,” he says immediately, adding that he has discussed the wider Yorkshire proposals with the Labour leader and they were “in absolute agreement”. The party has not formally backed One Yorkshire, but a spokesperson said Labour was at the forefront of “the drive for real and meaningful devolution in the region”.

Asked whether he eventually plans to run for mayor of Yorkshire – which he says will be the second most important head of a devolved region after Sadiq Khan in London – Jarvis says: “Forgive me if I gently point out that I haven’t even been selected as a Labour candidate.

“There’s a lot of work to do before we can start speculating about who might run for that role,” he adds. “One bridge at a time.”