There are a few difficulties with swallowing the government's commitment to 'levelling up'.
1. It's a policy agenda that has followed a soundbite and has been cooked up to rationalize it, ex post.
2. much of the agenda is about undoing the effects of past policies pursued by Conservatives. Letting the market rip in the closure of the old industries, with little support afterwards in the 1980s; the austerity policy of the 2010-2016 period which gutted local govt.
3. the govt's complete detachment from evidenced based policymaking and economics in its pursuit of Brexit, and Brexit's design [and now the parallel 'Brexit Opportunities' wp] is an extremely ill omen for making progress on levelling up.
4. The agenda is not being backed up by serious new money. And levelling up agendas in the past, here, and in other countries have not managed to eradicate spatial inequality despite colossal funding.
5. Hard to believe that it will retain the support of all the internal Tory factions. Levelling up means taking money from prosperous Tory areas, making those MPs nervous...
...it means accepting and reversing past Tory policy failures, which were participated in by many sitting in the House now;
...it means large scale intervention in markets to correct their failures, antagonizing the pro markets Tories.
...the govt, if it lives on to pilot this agenda for many years, will find out it means spending a lot of money, which will antagonize the low tax, fiscal conservatives.
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