Levelling up remains a strong concept. But its implementation has been flawed from the start
Boris Johnson's 2019 election victory came to fruition thanks to the support of traditional Labour voters in post-industrial areas. But his flagship promise to level up has failed miserably.
The story of the last general election, in 2019, has been revisited many times, not least in this column. But first, a revisit. The election was, of course, one of major political realignment — traditional working-class Labour voters shifted to support the Conservatives, many of them for the first time. The combined forces of Brexit and the Corbyn leadership of Labour drove them to support Boris Johnson in numbers. One question a friend posed to me on election night which has remained etched in my memory is an important one: “How was it that Boris the Etonian managed to convince the working-classes?” This point was not made or spoken in a snobbish or disdainful manner of those who supported him; but instead one of mystery — at least on election night — but one which is now much clearer more than four years on.
But what drove them to vote for Johnson in great numbers and in areas of Britain which, say, a decade or two ago, would never have dreamed of voting Conservative, spoke of the style of philosophy offered by the then leader. Johnson, though appearing affluent and elitist, likes to appear and present himself as a figure of optimism for the future. Indeed, that is how he, along with others such as Michael Gove, behaved during the EU referendum campaign in 2016: Johnson and Gove, among others, complained of the Remain campaign being too pessimistic, inward-looking and declinist (to which there is an element of truth), whilst the Leave camp was hopeful, ambitious and so forth, they said.
This hopeful optimism espoused by the former Prime Minister can be evidenced during the last election when he pledged to level up the country, reducing the regional inequalities between north and south, east and west. To be precise, the Conservative manifesto promised “to level up every part of the United Kingdom”.
So let’s unpack this argument. The promise itself is a decent one — I mean, who doesn’t want to see a more equal nation where prosperity and wealth are shared from top to bottom, north to south, east to west? It is a concept, I am confident, that is supported across the political divide from Left to Right — in one sense, Johnson had universal and unanimous support to bring opportunity to multifarious parts of the UK, not least those that had supported the Conservatives for the first time in 2019.
But the reason why it has failed miserably and why this ought to bring despair to those of us who genuinely wish to see greater prosperity shared across the country, in particular in areas where deprivation levels are high, is mostly thanks to rhetoric and delivery. There has been far too much of the former and far too little of the latter.
To be presumptuous for a moment, if one were to head to some of the so-called Red Wall areas who voted Conservative in 2019 and were to ask voters in various constituencies if the fruits of prosperity had been equally shared in their local communities, especially since the last election, I imagine the majority would say no. Yes, the country has had to deal with Covid, and that plausibly halted the progress the Johnson administration wished to push forward, in particular, regarding government spending. But the pandemic, and the recovery from it, ought to have been an opportunity to push this agenda further; to truly level up the country, devolve power from Whitehall to regional areas, and to signal to people in these communities — the ones that handed the Conservatives a significant majority in 2019 among others — that the levelling up project was more than just mere rhetoric. It was actually about delivery and decisive action, too.
What has also not helped regarding the delivery is the various missteps and alterations at Westminster. Johnson is seen as the architect of levelling up, but his two successors in Downing Street have rather different views when it comes to this concept: although her time in power was rather minimal, Liz Truss devoted very little time or attention to levelling up; if anything there was talk of greater investment and deregulation in specific areas but this idea lacked detail and it never transpired as a result of her humiliating exit. For Rishi Sunak, it is also a mixed, rather weak record: although a parliamentarian representing a Yorkshire constituency, the Prime Minister once publicly told an audience in Tunbridge Wells that he had diverted funds from poorer, residential areas to ones such as theirs. Not to mention the stalled lack of progress made by the government in what was hailed as a flagship policy.
Unfortunately, what arose following the last election — one of political realignment — was an opportunity for economic realignment to match. It was a serious chance to invest and for the Tories to put their money where their mouth is. But thus far, more than four years on from a landslide victory, long-lasting government inefficiency and the chopping-and-changing in Whitehall have hindered the progress of the levelling up project. With an election looming, such progress looks wholly unlikely now, at least under this current administration.
The vote to leave the European Union in 2016 and the Tory landslide in 2019 were major opportunities to readdress the geographical imbalances in our country. Indeed, it was those who supported Brexit and major Tory figures who told us that this could be the chance to definitively level up and reduce inequalities. It is clear that this has not come to fruition. That, I’m afraid, is the story of levelling up, at least under this government: it was a strong concept and idea (and it remains as such today), but the rhetoric from ministers has far exceeded delivery and actual, genuine change on the ground. Some of us, even those opposed to the incompetence of successive governments, were hopeful for true meaningful reform from Whitehall of the economic imbalances that exist in our country. It seems we’ll have to wait for a new and incoming government to see delivery prioritised over rhetoric.