And if you want to understand Middlesbrough properly, you have to understand what this place once was. In 1862, Gladstone stood in Middlesbrough Town Hall and called it an “infant Hercules.” He wasn’t exaggerating. By the 1870s, Teesside was helping set the world price for iron and steel. Dorman Long built the steel for the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the Tyne Bridge. ICI Billingham became one of the largest industrial complexes in the British Empire. Wilton alone employed around 25,000 people. The people I care for today still receive ICI pensions. That is how recently Teesside was an industrial powerhouse. Then came the decline. UK steel employed around 320,000 people in 1971. By 2014, just 24,000 remained. Redcar’s blast furnace finally went out in 2015, taking thousands of jobs with it. But what really angers people here is what came afterwards. 1987: Thatcher walked across the derelict Head Wrightson site in Thornaby and said, “The North was built by the enterprise of its people.” We got redevelopment, retail parks, a barrage and a marina. What we did not get was another industrial base capable of replacing what had disappeared. 2010: “We are all in this together.” North East councils then lost 27.8% of their funding, compared with 15.7% in the South East. 2015: Redcar steelworkers were promised “up to £80 million” in support after SSI collapsed. 2021: we were told government would “break the link between geography and destiny.” Teesside Freeport was launched with huge promises of jobs and investment. And yes, there has been progress. SeAH’s £950m monopile factory is real and welcome, and Teesworks has attracted serious investment. But Houchen cannot use that as a shield for everything else. Under his watch, the public stake in Teesworks Ltd fell from 50% to 10%, private partners gained 90% control, and the whole project became dogged by questions over transparency, governance and value for public money. Teesside deserves regeneration, but it also deserves accountability. We should never have to choose between the two. Because when genuine industry comes here, Teessiders respond. After SSI closed, more than 2,000 jobs were created, hundreds more safeguarded and 336 new businesses started. The people never stopped grafting. They never lost their ambition. What they lost was the economic ecosystem around them. For forty years Teesside has been given regeneration schemes, slogans, taskforces, development corporations, levelling-up funds and promises about what is coming next. Some worked. Some failed. None came close to replacing what was lost. So when people look at Middlesbrough today and ask, “What happened to this place?” There is your answer. An industrial town had its economic heart ripped out, and successive governments never built a proper replacement. That is not an excuse for crime, antisocial behaviour or dependency. Those things should be confronted. But neither should we pretend they appeared from nowhere. Teesside does not need another slogan. It needs industry. It needs infrastructure. It needs skills. It needs functioning councils.