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Where ‘levelling up’ funds go doesn’t matter. They aren’t supposed to work [1]
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Date: 2023-01
Amid all the squabbling about the distribution of ‘levelling up’ funds today, let’s remember the context.
Britain has the worst regional inequality in Europe, with some of the starkest divides between its richest and poorest areas of any large country in the West. Inner-west London, the richest region, has a per capita GDP of nearly £190,000 – about ten times that of the poorest regions.
The UK also has one of the most centralised systems of local government. The average French commune has less than 2,000 people. In Spain, the equivalent figure is 5,700. In Germany, it’s 7,300, Canada, 10,300, Sweden, 36,000. In England, it’s 204,000.
It seems improbable that these two facts coincide by chance. It is far more likely that the vast centralisation of power into Westminster is to blame for the deep impoverishment of much of the UK.
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Of course, the UK’s poverty isn’t just structured by region: Grenfell Tower rose up in the heart of inner-west London. Deep poverty exists alongside, often in direct relationship with, exuberant wealth. Every fancy office needs a cleaner. Soaring asset prices push the propertyless into homelessness. Likewise, poorer regions have their upper classes, rising bourgeoisie and flashy golf clubs. But poverty is also clustered geographically, endemic in Teesside or west Wales or west Cornwall.
Along with the extreme centralisation of local government in England is the fact that it has less power and less permanence than most nations. On one hand, the capacity to make decisions over substantial areas of our lives has again and again been sucked up into the centre. On the other, it has been privatised out to faceless consultancy firms.
At times over the past century, when it has suited the central state, layers of regional government have been built on top of England’s local authorities: the metropolitan mayoralties and elected police and crime commissioners established by the Tories in the past decade being the latest examples. But these tiers aren’t embedded into our political life, they live and die at Westminster’s whim. When Thatcher didn’t like what Ken Livingstone and the Greater London Council were up to in the 1980s, she abolished it. If Andy Burnham posed a serious threat to Westminster’s power, he would be shuffled off in another round of reforms.
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[1] Url:
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/levelling-up-not-supposed-to-work-inequality-poverty-north-london-south-east-england/
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