Free the cities, free the North – then we might have a chance of levelling up

While much of the rest of the country crumbles, we rely on London to keep delivering. It’s an imbalance that must be corrected, writes Chris Blackhurst

‘Boris Johnson made a splash with his call for levelling up’ (PA)

The headline in The Economist could not be more pointed. “Free the North” cries the magazine, in a major piece that outlines the yawning gap in our land, between the prosperous South and the struggling North, and suggests that the divide must be closed and how.

One stark finding came from the OECD (the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development), which determined that 11 British second-tier cities, mostly in the North of England, have a gross value added (GVA) per worker of 86 per cent of the national average. Contrast that with second-tier cities in most countries, whose productivity matches or exceeds the national average. London is as rich as Paris, but metropolitan Birmingham or Leeds is nowhere near as rich as Lyon or Toulouse.

No one should be happy about this lopsided picture, be they proud Northerner or smug Southerner. “The country’s long-running growth problem cannot be solved – more to the point, has not been solved – by one superstar metropolis,” The Economist concluded.