Skylines, The Citymetric Podcast

I’m very excited about this week’s guest – so excited that one point this was going to be the Christmas special, but I got too excited to wait. I’ve even pitched this guest’s identity as a mystery at the start of the show, so in an ideal world I wouldn’t even name them here at all. But that’d be terrible SEO, so I’m going to get on with it and just hope that nobody actually bothers to read this thing. So:This week’s guest is Sue Jeffrey, the leader of Redcar & Cleveland council, and Labour’s candidate to be mayor of the Tees Valley. Sue was, tragically, unsuccessful in that race, losing 49/51 in the final round to the Conservative Ben Houchen. This result caused much consternation in the New Statesman office, and on this podcast – so much so, that it’s still an election that people reference to Stephen Bush and myself.Anyway: having accidentally turned Sue into a meme, I decided it was time to actually interview her. From her office in Redcar, she explained to me why devolution matters to regions like her