Spotlight: A time for decisive action

The rise of the Cross Brigade

Ah, the Great British Summer.

Sun, sea, sand. And sale sticker standards.

That’s right. A year after Great British Patriots looted Lush and cleaned out Crocs collections, they were back, gathered once again alongside fellow Bargain Battalion recruits to save their country in red, white and blue glory.

With cut-price Temu Union flags over their shoulders and fingers poised on scarlet spray can nozzles, nothing was safe from the Cross Brigade.

Mini roundabouts; meter boxes; road signs; cars; bins; bare brick walls; a clothing and shoe bank.

Even the lampposts got it.

Rows of Union and St George colours cable-tied three-quarters up poles – presumably the point where the loaned cherry picker couldn’t stretch any higher – streaked down roads in a scene fit for a services parade.

Except the forces were nowhere to be seen.

Pride in your country is one thing. But when that loyalism becomes bastardised by bar room blather and Facebook-fuelled fallacies, it becomes an altogether different proposition.

And that’s the point we’ve reached (again).

The paint will chip and wash away, and the flags will fray and discolour as autumnal wind and rain turns to winter squalls.

But the performative fury will simmer on through the storms.

And to stop it bubbling over again next summer, the Government must finally act with clarity and certainty.

Which means going beyond immigration and its ongoing struggle with Reform’s rising ranks.

As N magazine went to print, Labour was attempting to stiffen regulations around refugee families and international students claiming asylum after visas expire.

But a regime that spent its first year like a pentimento painter must use its second stanza to be much more assertive.

It must venture where the Conservatives failed to visit in more than a decade and tackle the economic malaise, the hollowed towns, the rising social housing lists, the vanishing community services and the overstretched healthcare system that have made the Cross Brigade feel empowered.

Because this summer – just like 2024 – was never solely about border crossings and headlines about hotels housing those in need.

It was a clear example of what happens when people feel left behind and ignored.

And if ministers don’t heed the warning, next summer will play out like the one just past: flags up, spray cans out and chaos made patriotic.

Boosting the skills agenda

The classrooms, lecture theatres and engineering halls may have fallen silent over the summer, but the region’s education sector nevertheless remained abuzz.

The noise came from the launch of Colleges for North East England, which bosses say “signals a new era of collaboration, ambition and action to address the region’s most pressing skills challenges and opportunities”.

Boasting combined assets of £433 million and more than 62,000 students, they add it will work with the North East Combined Authority to boost learning in high-growth sectors and drive new programmes aimed at tackling poverty.

In a world where employers continue to call for staff who can meet today’s demands while helping drive tomorrow’s industries, the body’s formation is more than welcome.

For too long, N magazine – through its roundtable events, panel discussions and interviews with multi-sector leaders – has reported on a fracture between education and the workplace, where a tangled relationship hasn’t truly benefited either.

Colleges for North East England, which, among others, includes Bishop Auckland College, Gateshead College, Newcastle College and Tyne Coast College, represents an opportunity to tangibly change that.

The fact the endeavour – which also includes the Education Partnership North East body that oversees Sunderland College, Northumberland College and Hartlepool Sixth Form – promises to work in harmony with the North East Combined Authority, leaning into the promise of devolution, only augurs well too.

Of course, action must now be delivered, but with such alignment the foundations are in place to turn ambition into results.

If that momentum is sustained, then learners – and the region’s employers and economy – stand to gain in ways that will be felt for years to come.

Falcons gain their wiiings

It was hardly Alexander Isak-esque in the saga stakes, but Red Bull’s takeover of Newcastle Falcons nonetheless kept headline writers busy during rugby union’s off season.

The name might be divisive; Newcastle Red Bulls is about as saccharine as a can of its energy drink.

But pushing the semantics aside for a moment, the move – for a club that has languished at the foot of England’s top tier for too long – represents a great coup.

Crucially, it provides new-found belief that with Red Bull’s support, the club can not only climb the domestic ladder again but, to borrow the firm’s marketing spiel, gain wiiings to fly to the top table of European competition.

Naturally, there will be some sad to see their local club swallowed up by a global conglomerate, for whom success on the field
will mean as much as points on the board as it will marketing exposure.

But the days of rags to riches tales are, sadly, few and far between in the world of elite sport these days.

And it is worth remembering the Falcons’ heyday came via fairy godfather Sir John Hall. So Red Bull’s arrival isn’t exactly a novel concept.

And with Newcastle United ending its trophy drought, Sunderland AFC back in the Premier League, Middlesbrough FC – at the time of writing – topping the Championship and the region’s women’s teams making their mark, from football sides to Durham Women’s first season in cricket’s elite, the Red Bull takeover presents a great opportunity to write another chapter in the region’s sporting success story.