The FT has covered the so-called plan for levelling up England and Wales this morning, noting that:
The Guardian goes into greater depth on this occasion, suggesting in its news analysis this morning that:
Some of the wealthiest parts of England, including areas represented by government ministers, have so far been allocated 10 times more money per capita than the poorest under Boris Johnson's “levelling up” agenda, Guardian analysis has found.
Michael Gove, the communities secretary, will announce on Wednesday new measures designed to end what the prime minister has called the “outrage” of regional inequalities.
But analysis of the £4.7bn allocated under the levelling up agenda to date shows how some of England's most deprived areas are receiving far less support than some of the richest boroughs. A further £1.8bn is still to be announced.
They add a chart:
Bromsgrove is Sajid Javid's constituency. It is not poor. Central Bedfordshire is partly the constituency of Nadine Dories. Hambelton is Rishi Sunak's patch.
Meanwhole Hackney is Diane Abbott's constituency. Islington is Jeremy Corbyn's.
So what is going on here?
Firstly, corruption. Let's not beat about the bush. This is not chance. The vote is being bought. There is no attempt to govern fairly. Such allocations cannot be rationally justified and so another explanation has to be found. There is only one that I can think of.
Second, the message is being sent that the so-called Levelling Up agenda is meaningless. Without funding it amounts to nothing. It's almost as if the government wishes that to be said.
Third, this is a government out of ideas. They know how to send funding to their friends through wasted spending on PPE. They have no clue how to deliver social, economic or regional policy fairly.
There is no point in analysing this further. The policy was always meaningless, and there is nothing going to happen without funding. The sham of governing on behalf of the country when no such thing is happening is what is going on here.
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It seems the only competence this government has is giving money to its friends. These figures are damning indeed; as is the evidence of chaos in the management of the financing of COVID related equipment, as exposed by the Public Accounts Committee.
Not quite sure how Sajid Javid turned into Sadiq Khan as the MP for Bromsgrove, but you might want to change it back
Embarrassing
I had just been discussing London – he stuck in my memory
Mea culpa
‘Levelling up’ has always been a Tory code word for giving out huge amounts of dosh to the rich and their mates.
The justification is no doubt is that these simplistic bastards have looked the social security bill (what’s left of it) and decided that if all those oiks and wasters can have Government cash then so can the rich.
That’s what levelling up is in the Tory twisted world – more Government support for the rich. That’s why we have ‘Help to Buy’ for example – so that the those who can buy can buy bigger and the developers that fund the Tories get more profits.
You could not dream up such a thing unless you were as twisted as the Tories are.
I fear that we will now see a drip feed of “look what you can win” stories between now and the local elections highlighting where tory controlled councils and constituencies with tory MPs are benefiting / going to benefit from levelling up funding.
I fear this is already happening, I recall a recent by-election or council election somewhere in Yorkshire or Humberside. In an interview by a local news reporter a voter when questioned who & why they voted for? Simply responded “Conservative …as you need a Tory MP / council to receive government money, previously under Labour they hadn’t received owt!”
In the Hartlepool by-election people said they voted tory because they had given them food banks when there were none under labour.
Staggering….I agree
Let’s face it levelling up would not be a good policy for the Tories. Better educated citizens and cities do not tend to vote Tory so why would they commit funds to create people who won’t vote for you. The people who do are older, live in rural areas and under priviledged towns and smaller cities. Levelling up is a sham designed to con those voters into supporting them but it just words and means nothing
Labour’s Reeves and Nandy today seemed just not up to the job of defining the ground on which this should be fought. Simon Clarke Chief Sec to the Treasury , on radio4 WATO this lunchtime still felt confident enough to trot out yet again ‘Labour left the country bankrupt’ to excuse the 10 years of austerity.
Even in conventional terms, under Labour, public spending and income were only 2% out of balance immediately before the financial crash of 2008.
Labour could easily trumpet ‘we saved the world’ at the G20 /QE summit and argued that the economy was getting back on track towards 2010 before the coalition cracked down and imposed years of austerity.
Reeves and Nandy will not answer the question ‘where would you get the money from?’ to put more investment into left behind regions. How much worse will it be when they are asked that in the next election?
Who knows?
I’m particularly concerned about the implications in the devolved nations of the Tories interfering in matters reserved to those nations. Their proposals may well clash with the policies and plans of the devolved governments and will certainly cause confusion among citizens and authorities local and national.