The Politics of Levelling Up

Abstract

‘Levelling up’ is an expression of a realignment in British politics with the Conservatives presenting themselves as the new party of redistribution. This is not primarily concerned with redistribution between social classes, or even between regions, but rather targets communities that feel they have lost their centrality and standing. This seemingly surprising manoeuvre is facilitated by voters’ distrust of politics, a geography of discontent that reflects uneven patterns of social and economic development, and the Conservative Party's capacity for pragmatic shifts in ideological direction. Yet, the sustainability of this project is uncertain. Levelling up creates opportunities for high‐profile initiatives and symbols of change through which the government can craft a narrative of success. It may also help the Conservatives appeal to voters that lean one way on economics but another on social issues by targeting attention and interventions in specific places—in a way that speaks to some voters’ feelings of having been neglected over many decades and having lost status to other groups in society. The tensions in delivering levelling up reflect the complexity of the changes wrought by globalisation and technological change, but the challenge for progressive forces is to develop a better alternative—a far from easy task.

From EU Structural Funds to Levelling Up: Empty signifiers, ungrounded statism and English regional policy

“…Fundamentally, not only is the sub-regional institutional framework in England under-developed, but the Treasury’s grip over borrowing through financial control and economic management greatly diminishes the discretion and room for manoeuvre of local actors. Levelling up funding is heavily centralised and controlled by the Treasury alongside the MHCLG (Jennings et al, 2021). The Westminster system of government is more generally characterised by centralisation, top-down decision-making, and hierarchy accompanied by the fragmented administrative landscape at the sub-regional level with a multiplicity of organisations divided by overlapping responsibilities and powers – as this study of the Structural Funds and regional economic development has demonstrated (Rhodes, 2005; Warner et al, 2021).…”

Can the Conservative Party Survive Boris Johnson?

“…Undone by his own hubris and the burning desire for revenge of his former closest advisor, Dominic Cummings, Johnson has, to the frustration of his sympathisers, tossed away the chance to embed a realignment of British politics to Conservative electoral advantage. This failure is most obviously manifest in his much-trumpeted levelling up agenda, which remains beset with inconsistencies and has yet to evolve from an effective political slogan into a coherent policy programme (Jennings et al 2021; Newman, 2021).…”

Understanding resilient places: Multi-level governance in times of crisis

“…Retaining local and subnational state capacity in the face of fiscal pressures will be the key if government is to recommit to and accelerate policies to boost economies in lagging and left behind places including those in the Northeast, Tees Valley and the East Midlands. This was initially absent from the language of Levelling Up whose early focus was on short term, physical capital and infrastructure projects (Jennings et al, 2020). The Levelling Up White Paper (HMG, 2022) now acknowledges that local government funding has been over reliant on bidding for funding and offers some initial thoughts about place-based budgets.…”