Nil point for city ambitions (From Daily Echo)

Nil point for city ambitions

2:30pm Friday 7th May 2010 in Hampshire Business By Gareth Lewis, Business Editor

Nil point for city ambitions

WITH THE CLARITY AFFORDED BY 20- 20 hindsight, it is clear now how disastrously Southampton has been led since the turn of the Millennium.

It is today as apparent as the gaping hole where Tyrrell and Green used to be that the city spectacularly failed to cash in on a boom without compare since the time of Good Queen Bess It was a time where money was cheap and plentiful and ambitious dreams were realised by forward thinking cities from Manchester to Portsmouth.

But not here.

No. Throughout this golden era the city managed to realise precisely no major projects, Not one. Nothing. Nada. Nil point. The last one of real commercial significance was WestQuay, which opened at the start of the decade in September 2000. I’ll give you St Mary’s Stadium (opened August 2001) if you really insist.

But from that day to this, it’s been a grim tide of collapse. Of failure snatched from the jaws of victory. Cock-up and calamity have been the hallmarks of administration after administration, whatever the hue.

Today our leaders have left us mortgaged to the whims of developers. Helpless when they go belly-up, as has happened with depressing monotony. Angry at opportunities missed. Mystified as to why we can’t do better when we are the powerhouse of the south’s economy one of Europe’s biggest regional economies.

That’s why, as Brown, Cameron and Clegg vie for our affections, it’s difficult to avoid the conclusion that it’s all a bit of a sideshow for Southampton.

As they might have it in Hamlet, there’s something rotten in the state of Southampton and the flavour of national government is going to do little to root it out.

At the time of writing, local elections are also underway but no matter who wins, you again fear little is really going to change.

The system is not delivering and it is long past time we looked for another way down here, something that can deliver the sort of city changing projects we need.

Quietly, momentum is growing behind the calls for an elected city mayor. You hear it talked about time and time again.

And maybe there’s something in it.

Imagine a charismatic leader with half an eye on their legacy, powerfully able to sweep aside petty obstacles and political infighting and just get things done. It could see the Civic Centre reborn, phoenix like from the ashes of a decade of decline as a dynamic and creative force.

It’ll probably never happen and, weirdly, that’s largely the fault of one of Southampton’s favourite sons. They call it the le Tissier effect, after the fear among city mandarins that the sainted Matt’s a shoe-in for the job and will be swept to power on a tidal wave of red and white striped support.

However unlikely that may be today after his ill advised and embarrassing dabble in the world of low finance during a Saints takeover bid, he stands as a cipher for any populist but unsuitable candidate.

It famously happened in Hartlepool, where they elected a monkey called H’Angus, the football team mascot, on a platform of free bananas for schoolchildren.

But the nightmare didn’t pan out.

He was re-elected in 2005 with a thumping majority and, by now standing under his real name of Stuart Drummond, was the first mayor in Britain to win a third term last year.

It’s said you get the leaders you deserve – isn’t about time we did.?