England must unite to solve deepening divides

I was at a ‘think tank’ dinner last week on the ‘Westminster bubble’. It was in Soho! Nevertheless, a good meal and conversation was had. Inevitably we got onto the north/south divide. Many around the table felt it was getting worse. I agree. However, it is being surpassed by something much worse.

For 80 years, the ‘regional question’ was inadequately tackled. From 1999 to their abolition in 2012, the regional development agencies tinkered with the economic output gap between the regions, but it was never enough to check the extent to which the successful post-industrial areas got richer, whilst the old industrial areas got poorer. The failure to tackle this national systemic economic issue then, has now been coupled to national economic recession and cuts to the welfare state. This has spawned deeper local social and economic divisions. We may well look back on the north/south divide as a walk in the park, compared to what we have now. The social and economic landscape of England has moved on, to something much worse.

The north/south divide argument is a convenient shorthand for many who wish for a fairer and socially just England. However, while it describes a general feature of our economy and it does has some cultural meaning, I think is being overtaken by a new national shared reality.

We now have growing divides across all our regions, cities and towns. We have two speed economies, dual cities, haves and have-nots, the employed and unemployed, the well paid and the low paid, the elites and the excluded. There is no simple geography to this. England is a land of many and deepening divisions –inequality has no compass points. You could now argue it is more London and the rest? But even that doesn’t ring wholly true. London is riven with just as many divides, as the haves gentrify, colonise and drive the have-nots increasingly outward or squeeze them into social housing pockets.

For those who want to address the social and economic divisions there is a need to start focussing on the divisions which the whole country shares. This is not about being a big state centralist, localism has a key role. However, I think we need to reassert an English collective approach to our economy and to our welfare state. I am not against a line of thinking which argues for local governance, and that a resurgence of local, regional and even northern self determination, as a means of addressing the divisions. But I do think these arguments are putting the cart before the horse. They could do some good, but progressive thinking and policy needs to act collectively and rebuild a national sense that social and economic divisions are bad, and use the national powers of the state to do something about them.

I am also sympathetic to line of reasoning which believes more financial autonomy from Whitehall, through local bargaining for more powers (as in the city deal process), will steadily bring new favourable economic and social settlement for the local areas. It has a chance in the larger regional cities, but it will have its limits. The systemic national forces which favour the haves, runs deep across the country and within the regional cities themselves. Furthermore, in times of ongoing public sector cuts, and a sluggish economy, if we do start to see significant more autonomy for some areas, the arguments of more autonomy for London will race up the agenda.

London and the City of London – faced with bullish regions and regional cities – may just pull the capital increasingly out of England. This may even have begun! London mayor Boris Johnson hasset up the London Finance Commission to investigate how the capital could hold on to more of its tax revenues. If this were to happen the rest would be even more cut adrift.

England needs our top world class striker – London – but all parts of England need a decent share of its global economic power and wealth. We can’t drive London away, we must make London more a part of England and play its part for England.

A more inclusive future must get the sequencing right. A route to a progressive and more socially just England is not constructed by making a sweeping geographical case for a downtrodden north and an affluent London. Nor is it to be found in a localism of isolated local bargaining, which pitches areas against each other and separates London from the rest. The progressive future is about reforming the prevailing national economic and social policy, changing a trajectory which favours local haves and neglects the local have-nots. It’s a quest for centralists and localists. This is the progressive quest for all of England. We are in this together.