Local leaders are the ‘magic sauce’ to level up UK, says Johnson

The prime minister has promised to “rewrite the rule book” on local government to level up the UK. Speaking in Coventry, Boris Johnson said that his vision for a levelled up Britain would not “make the poor parts of the country richer by making the rich parts poorer”. “Let us be clear about the difference between this project and levelling down,” Johnson explained to his audience. “We don’t want to level down. We don’t want to decapitate the tall poppies.” “Levelling up is not a jam-spreading operation,” he declared. “It’s not robbing Peter to pay Paul, it’s not zero sum. It’s win-win for the whole United Kingdom.” In fact, he explained, putting less investment into London and the South East would actually help those regions. “Investing in areas where house prices are already sky high and where transport is already congested and by turbo-charging those areas, especially in London and the South East, you drive prices even higher and you force more and more people to move to the same expensive areas.” By investing in the North and the Midlands, Wales and Northern Ireland, opportunities would be created there and “the parts that are overheating” would be allowed to cool. The speech, while packed with rhetoric and some classic Borisisms, was relatively light on detail or new policy. Levelling up would be achieved by putting more police on streets, he said, by handing over £50m for more football pitches, by dishing out the £10bn of grants from the four already established levelling up funds. But at the heart of Johnson’s vision was a proposal to hand more power to local and regional government. Instead of explaining how this would happen, Johnson suggested that it would be an ad hoc arrangement, whereby regional government leaders would approach central government for more funding. “Come to us with a plan for strong accountable leadership and we will give you the tools to change your area for the better,” he said. Johnson said that leadership was “the most important factor in levelling up”. It was “the final ingredient… the yeast that lifts the whole mattress of dough, the magic sauce – the ketchup of catch-up and that is leadership.” Levelling up would also require a consistent strategic vision, “not chopping and changing”. However, there was no mention of the fact that the government had recently cut its own industrial strategy, opting instead for a “directionless, suck it and see approach”, in the words of one Conservative backbencher. Labour’s deputy leader, Angela Rayner, described the speech as “gibberish nonsense”, adding that it was thin on actual policy. “He does not do detail,” she said. “He does soundbites.” The BPF said that levelling up would not happen without large amounts of private sector investment – crucially, from the real estate sector, which pours £60bn into the UK economy each year. The BPF said that, instead of acknowledging this contribution, the government seemed determined to hamstring the sector. Ian Fletcher, director of policy at the BPF, said: “The combined impact of the commercial rent moratoriums, abusive CVAs and punitive business rates is putting this investment at risk. “High-street businesses are still paying rates based on rental values from 2015, and well-capitalised tenants continue to abuse protections aimed at smaller and more vulnerable businesses.” Fletcher added: “Private equity and wealthy business owners also continue to cynically use CVAs as an excuse to shift onto property owners the cost of years of failings and underinvestment. “This is undermining the attractiveness of UK real estate for the patient, long-term capital that will be crucial to making levelling up a success and ensuring a more positive future for our town centres.” To send feedback, e-mail piers.wehner@eg.co.uk or tweet @PiersWehner or @EGPropertyNews