His northern friends might find Johnson is ‘all mouth and no trousers’

The prime minister’s promises about levelling up are vacuous and meaningless, he’s going to have to temper his claims if he doesn’t want to lose the north, writes Chris Blackhurst

Conservative Party candidate for Hartlepool Jill Mortimer won the by-election (Getty)

We live in the age of empty slogans and vacuous mission statements. Any business, any organisation, is nothing unless it possesses a phrase to which it clings and on closer reading is meaningless. The government, of course, is not immune. We’ve had “Get Brexit Done”, which was duly achieved without sufficient regard for how leaving the EU would function in practice, certainly not where Northern Ireland is concerned.  

Still, Brexit is in the bag. We’ve had a rude interruption from Covid, but now that is diminishing, attention will focus on that favoured mantra of the prime minister: “levelling up”. 

Same as “Get Brexit Done” went down a storm in the north, “levelling up” is its popular successor, witness the Hartlepool by-election result. But, exactly like its predecessor, no one has much of a clue as to how the words translate into reality.  

Evidence of this comes with the recruitment of Neil O’Brien as Boris Johnson’s “chief adviser on the levelling up agenda”. O’Brien, originally from Yorkshire and Conservative MP for Harborough, used to be a special adviser to George Osborne when chancellor and Theresa May as prime minister, so he knows how the Treasury and Whitehall interact. O’Brien is thoughtful and policy-minded. His appointment was interpreted as adding much-needed ballast.  

Everyone has a rough idea as to what “levelling up” means. Closing inequality between the post-industrial north, ravaged by decades of underinvestment, with the prosperous south. 

It’s what the prime minister promised after the general election triumph when the northern “red wall” seats delivered him victory: “Those people want change. We cannot, must not, must not, let them down.” Yet, there is still little clue as to what that “agenda” comprises and the timeline it is following. When I return to the north, to visit family and friends, when I ask about how “levelling up” is going, they laugh and shake their heads. If it’s happening they say, it’s not occurring round here.  

Johnson is going for some quick wins. The order has gone out for government departments to shift as many people as possible from London. HS2 is forcing ahead. Road improvement schemes are planned. New hospitals have been announced. Freeports are to be established. Renewable energy manufacturing projects are advancing. The UK Infrastructure Bank, headquartered in Leeds, began work this week, with a view to unlocking £40bn of financing.  

At the same time, there are signs of  “levelling down”, with councils in the south complaining they’re not being heard in government, that pleas for extra cash are stuck on the back burner.  

In the same way he learned with Covid to temper his claims and predictions, Johnson may have to curb his characteristic runaway enthusiasm where ‘levelling up’ is concerned

Doubtless, this will all give Johnson successes to point to when the next general election comes, when he tries to persuade those voters in the north to back him again.  

Yes, but longer term, what’s it about? When pressed, Downing Street insiders say they do know what the “levelling up agenda” comprises. They settle on four areas: regional economic policy; spreading opportunity across the country; improving the outputs and outcomes from public services; and the non-economic improvements of “quality of life” and “pride in place”. 

To which the only proper response is golly and a sharp intake of breath. That’s about as challenging a roll call for reform as it’s possible to devise. It covers a multitude of deficiencies, each one of them insoluble without the devotion of much effort and money. Unemployment, health poverty, lack of good education, poor skills, decrepit public housing, slow broadband, creaking transport links – those are some for starters. Righting that lot will take decades and devour many, many billions.  

Meanwhile, as that is occurring, what will be happening elsewhere? Ours is a service economy, not manufacturing. The engine room was once in the north, in steel, shipbuilding, engineering, mining. Not anymore. The economy’s hub is London – ignore that, allow the capital to fall behind other rival world business cities, put your resources somewhere else and there will be a heavy price to pay.  

What we can’t do is simply rearrange the pieces, so that one region strengthens at the expense of another. Freeports fall into this category. Ideally, they should be populated by new businesses, offering new jobs. More than likely, though, is that the firms they attract will be relocating from another part of the UK.  

Likewise, the jobs that are created must be genuine with proper career structures – the north has had enough of receiving call centres. Neither should we attract here today, gone tomorrow international firms who exploit subsidies to set up their shiny premises, only to scarper home as soon as the cash runs out or trading slips. There are too many empty factories and offices that were unveiled to great fanfare only to close a few years later. What is needed as well are science parks and bio-science and digital businesses, enterprises for the 21st century not the 20th.  

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“Improving public services and quality of life” and instilling “pride of place” read well on paper. But councils are suffering. They lack the means and the wherewithal to achieve those aims. This, too, against a backdrop of high streets decimated by the onslaught of online. 

There is so much that is lacking it is hard to know where to begin. In the same way he learned with Covid to temper his claims and predictions, Johnson may have to curb his characteristic runaway enthusiasm where “levelling up” is concerned. There is a saying, much-used among his northern friends: all mouth and no trousers.