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Good afternoon.
“Levelling up” the fortunes of Britain’s small towns outside the south-east of England was meant to be the signature policy of Boris Johnson’s ill-fated administration. Sir Keir Starmer promises to succeed where Mr Johnson struggled. In the past month there have been signals as to how
a Labour government
would approach this task.
Britain’s debate on how to make poorer regions prosper has been characterised (perhaps reductively) as one of towns versus cities. The towns camp has tended to emphasise restoring them as economic centres in their own right, often by reviving manufacturing via government intervention. This approach emphasises the role of industry in a sense of local pride and identity, and stresses the risk of a political backlash
(such as Brexit)
when such places feel overlooked. It reflects the notion that the job of policymakers is to ensure people should not have to travel from the place they were born to get well-paid work.
In contrast, the cities camp believes that the performance of small towns tends to be determined by how well their nearest city performs. Its advocates stress the economic benefits of agglomeration, whereby large clusters of activity tend to boost productivity; they argue that the best way to improve the fortunes of small towns is to better connect their labour markets with those of their neighbours through better transport infrastructure. It reflects the logic that it is a lot easier to move people closer to jobs than it is to relocate jobs to people.
These are not binary choices. In reality the Conservative government has attempted to do a bit of both. It has championed the role of mayors of large city regions, such as Andy Burnham in Greater Manchester and
Andy Street in the West Midlands.
But it has also doled out cash to smaller places under the “Towns Fund”, typically for projects such as revamping the local shopping arcade. But there are trade-offs: money can only be spent once. Most obviously,
Rishi Sunak has cut back HS2,
a large intercity rail project, and redirected the funding towards less transformational projects such as road maintenance. The Tories have often revelled in the politics of cultural resentment which portrays townsfolk as “real voters” and city-dwellers as privileged metropolitans.
What has become clear in the past month is that under a Labour government, the city-led approach will dominate. That was not a foregone conclusion. The towns approach was championed by Lisa Nandy, until recently Labour’s shadow local-government secretary and the MP for Wigan, a former coal-mining seat halfway between Manchester and Liverpool. She criticises an approach that “sees cities as engines of economic growth with surrounding towns at best anchored to them and pulled along in their prosperous wake.” Given that Labour’s political strategy has been focused on smaller towns, rather than the cities where it is already electorally dominant, it would have made sense if Ms Nandy’s approach prevailed.
Yet there are clear signs that the debate in Labour is not going Ms Nandy’s way. In a recent major speech at the
Bayes Business School,
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, put her thumb firmly on the scale in favour of the cities approach. “As our economy evolves, we need to do far more to unlock the benefits of agglomeration across Britain,” she said. She cited Ed Glaeser, an American economist and the author of “Triumph of the City”, a key text on the benefits of densification.
The direction of travel was
confirmed in a policy paper
that the party published on March 28th. It argues that Britain’s major cities are insufficiently dense and well-connected to prosper, and proposes compelling regional leaders to draw up growth plans that cut across administrative boundaries. The paper is steeped in the language of agglomeration. Take this very revealing passage on Labour’s plan to build 1.5m new homes: “This will increase the ‘effective size’ of our major cities and high-potential towns so that they can reap the benefits of scale and agglomeration needed to develop and cement their labour market clusters and comparative strengths.” Beneath the jargon, the message is clear: bigger is better. The city is back.
Also in this week’s edition:
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Over two-thirds of Britons
support changing the law
to allow for assisted dying. Our Britain correspondent, Georgia Banjo, explains why adults—in the right circumstances—should be able to
choose the way they die
-
Britain’s creaking water infrastructure needs an upgrade. Archie Hall, our Britain economics correspondent, explains why Thames Water
should go into administration
-
Meow you doing? Scotland is being repopulated with wildcats. Their greatest threat is not wolves or hunters, but
seduction by domestic pets,
writes Catherine Nixey
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