Is the North owed 'Reparations'?
Ben Houchen raised eyebrows by saying “We need to be repaid for the lack of investment over the last 50 years.” We consider the continued North/South economic divide.
Welcome to the 39th edition of The Teesside Lead. Something a little bit different to usual today as I stretch my legs with a long read, sparked by something Ben Houchen said last week.
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In the wake of the Brexit referendum successive Conservative governments were so singly focused on the process of leaving the EU that many other parts of the state started to suffer. There was no direction. No grand vision was presented of a post-Brexit Britain, leaving the party to dither, and eventually wither.
One vision that achieved the much-desired “cut-through”, by now apparently side-lined for a red version of the same, was that of Levelling Up. The idea of addressing regional equality in the UK is one that easily captured the imagination. It’s a simple name for an idea, and a project, that most people could support (the differences coming only in how to deliver it).
The flame of Johnsonism burns bright in the Tees Valley through its Conservative mayor Ben Houchen (whose dog is of course named after the former PM). This week Lord Houchen spoke at the launch of True North, a new think tank, in which he said the North had “been neglected for half a century. We haven't had the investment.”
In his usual style, he ramped up the stakes. “There needs to be a reparations process,” he claimed.
“We need to be repaid for the lack of investment over the last 50 years.”
Despite the potentially insensitive choice of words (major use of the word “reparations” is usually in the context of the descendants of enslaved people), does Ben Houchen have a point?
It seems to be a perspective which is shared across the spectrum. Henri Murison is chief executive of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership, an organisation which promotes the North as a place for investment, and hopes to close the north-south divide. Speaking to The Teesside Lead, he said: “The lower productivity here in the North of England doesn’t just lead to working people here on average being £8,000 a year worse off than if they were down south.
“It also means year after year taxpayers in London and the South East have to subsidise the benefit bill and higher health costs we have because we have underinvested in infrastructure which would have avoided causes of this ongoing cost.”
“Levelling Up” is the successor to the Northern Powerhouse, the vision of former chancellor George Osborne (remember him?). It was itself a successor of sorts to John Prescott’s Northern Way.
There have been so many attempts at addressing the divide caused by deindustrialisation, but tangible success is hard to come by.
Tangible success?
The aforementioned paralysis of government caused by Brexit led to an ineffective distribution of Levelling Up funds, with examples of local authorities spending hundreds of thousands on bids to receive nothing in return.
A Guardian analysis last year of the 12 Levelling Up targets set by Michael Gove in 2022 showed no progress in six, with evidence suggesting things actually got worse in three.
Murison says both Prescott and Osborne were “correct in their analysis”, but that the issue of the failure to address regional inequality comes from “their colleagues and successors,” who, he says, “didn’t stay the course consistently to follow through on their shared level of ambition.”
True North was set up by former Carlisle MP John Stevenson, who lost his seat to Labour last year. “This has to be above party politics,” he said. “We need investment and a positive story that will outlast successive general elections and governments.
“I believe our think tank can have a positive impact - many people working together, whatever their political persuasion or outlook.”
However, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland MP Luke Myer sees the discussion more cynically.
“It's astonishing that the Conservatives are now talking about regional inequality,” he told The Teesside Lead. “For all their talk about 'levelling up', regional divides worsened under their watch, with growth and investment lagging behind London and the south-east.
“A strong UK economy can only be built with a strong northern economy. This government is transferring power out of Westminster and into our communities, and investing in decent industrial jobs in every corner of the UK.”
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The point of building a strong UK economy based on improving the North is echoed by Murison. “To deliver the original Northern Powerhouse vision was always in the interests of the whole of the UK,” he says.
“The Treasury, despite the step of opening the Darlington Economic Campus, is still constrained by their theory that growth is a zero sum game,” he adds.
In his 2023 book, The North Will Rise Again, author Alex Niven says the setting up of a Northern outpost of the Treasury in Darlington is “at least a positive attempt to combat the radical centralization of the British economy and its citadels.”
He calls it a “meagre blueprint”, and that the state of transport in the North “most clearly shows up the hollowness of levelling up”. In 2019 projected spend on transport was seven-times higher in London than it was in the North East and Yorkshire.
The subsequent scrapping of HS2 beyond Birmingham really lays the challenge to addressing regional inequality bare.
“The change in the fiscal rules will allow more long term investment,” says Murison, “we just need major northern schemes prioritised based on their broad economic merit.
“As we improve connectivity between Darlington and Manchester, as well as on to the wider North East, more and more Northeners will be part of a single travel to work area.”
A better-connected North improving regional outcomes follows the same logic of improving north-south connections. Anybody living in the North East could tell you how it’s the poorer relation even within the North. True North was established to address that economic divide which exists between the metropolitan areas of the North West and West Yorkshire and areas in the North East and Cumbria.
How many big infrastructure projects are on the cards for the North? With Manchester United announcing a new £2bn stadium this week, part of its pitch to potential investors (including the government) is that it would be a benefit to the rest of its half of the country.
“If we get this right,” said Ben Houchen’s Greater Manchester counterpart Andy Burnham, “the regeneration impact could be bigger and better than London 2012.”
Henri Murison agrees. “London growth in the Lea Valley following the Olympics has benefited the whole city,” he says, “in the same way, jobs and opportunities in northern cities and towns will benefit the whole, not just those on the doorstep.”
Although the name “Levelling Up” has gone, in his first week in power Sir Keir Starmer held a meeting with all regional metro mayors in Downing Street. A true statement of intent of priorities.
“If it’s going to be growth that is worth having,” he said, “it’s going to be across the country and in every single place and raising standard in every single place.”
More than eight months later, has anything changed since that rudderless government which was voted out in July?
Let me know if you enjoyed this edition, and if this sort of long read is what you want more of. There are no advertisers, I’m only accountable to you, the reader!
Get in touch at teesside@thelead.uk or via Bluesky.
Thanks as always for reading!
Leigh