Thread by @Gilesyb

I don't know why this makes me so grumpy. But, on the basis of this very humdrum story, I cannot see anything in this "leveling up" agenda that does not simply come down to "partially restore state spending to make up for how it was cut from 2010"... 1/ on.ft.com/3BmRiS2

The test I constantly apply is "what do we have that Gordon Brown didn't have in 2007" and there is nothing I can think of, save a change in colours. Yet the story is written as if "regenerating places and trying to find new private sector activities" was invented in 2019 2/

We knew high streets were becoming rubbish in 2011. Pork barrel bidding for private sector ideas began in 2010 with the Regional Growth Fund. Actually, it began way earlier with European Regional Development Funds, but let's pretend that EU bureaucracy rendered it useless 3/

Even the idea of unitarising local authorities into bigger units - wasn't that actually happening in 2010, but Eric Pickles ended it IIRC? And let's not even start on Regional Development Agencies, abolished then as well 4/

Plus there's the whole basic idea that if local authorities have more money, they might spend it on things that make local people feel better, like flower gardens and libraries. Just like they could before budgets were murdered after 2010... Now it's announced with this gif...5/

My point is ABSOLUTELY NOT that everything was good in 2010, wicked Austerians ruined it all, etc etc. Clearly it wasn't. It is that diligent and better-resourced brains working on this were STRUGGLING with it! Just having money to fling wasn't the obvious answer 6/

(Which free market conservatives were quick to say - state spending crowds out, remember that?)

So what's the theory now? "You'll appreciate state spending now - having learned what it's like when it's drastically cut for 10 years??"

A Brexit angle?!?

7/

Honestly, insofar as I can judge, I welcome this restored funding. I think the endless slogan-titled competition pots are probably irritating though. But the breathless coverage as if some Whole New Political Economy Thing has been invented is just so captured... 8/8