Levelling up was meant to be the centre piece of Boris Johnson’s Government’s domestic agenda after the2019 election. But, by any measure, inequality is set to increase unless something is done quickly, with the UK on course to become the most unequal country in the G7 by 2027.
This has thrown the gauntlet down to the opposition parties – Labour in particular. Reducing inequality is at the heart of what Labour has stood for since its birth over 100 years ago. And the problems inequality brings is central to voters in many of the seats Labour need to win if it is to form the next government.
Our new report How Can Labour Level Up? collates contributions from former ministers, leaders from the higher education and voluntary sectors, as well as thinkers and organisations from across the political spectrum. Making levelling up work is more than just a quick political fix for me.
I grew up in the 1980s in a council estate in Blackpool when, under the Thatcher government, regional inequality was deepening. Blackpool is still feeling the impact of the recessions of the 1980s on the North as it is now one of the poorest parts of Britain.
I was lucky enough to be the first from my community to go to university and to Oxford where I studied alongside people for whom poverty was literally another world. But since my student years in the run-up to New Labour’s victory in 1997, we simply have not made enough progress in breaking down the barriers between the “haves’” and the “have nots”.
That is why this new report aims to offer constructive ideas regarding how Labour, or indeed any future government, can re-energise levelling up and address deep-rooted inequalities The contributors do not holdback in presenting the size of the challenge, but they also present solutions equal to it.
They look at the need to shift power. Mayor of the West of England, Dan Norris, outlines plainly the problems he has faced in addressing inequality due to the incomplete nature of devolution at present. They examine how to level up from childhood to work.
Labour councillor and skills adviser Praful Nargund makes the case for better wages for apprentices and the importance of green investment as underpinning levelling up.
The workplace is at the centre of levelling up. Justine Greening, former Secretary of State for Education and now chair of the Purpose Coalition, argues for the expansion of the measurement of socio-economic backgrounds of employees by firms.
Lord John Bird, co-founder of The Big Issue, argues that we need to marshal all our resources, working through a new Department of Poverty. The question of power and its distribution is a difficult one.
Danny Dorling, Professor of Geography at Oxford University, makes the point that inequality will only reduce when those who have the most have less. Labour failed to reduce inequality when it was last in power because those at the top continued to accumulate more.
Redistribution is the reality of addressing inequality. The job for Labour here is not changing its own mindset but the British mindset about redistribution, to normalise this in ways it is normalised in other countries.
The last time Labour won an election after a long period out of power was on a platform of renewal with a shift from old to “New” Labour. Something similar is required where levelling up is concerned.
Not necessarily mimicking the policies of that era, although as Phil Collins, associate editor of the New Statesman, argues, a return for Sure Start could be justified. But while progress was made lifting people out of poverty under the last Labour government, inequality increased.
“New levelling up” needs to recognise that the reason gross inequalities exist in the UK and so many millions of people’s lives are blighted by it is deeply rooted; in how we view inequality itself, how we are governed and how our economic system works.
Replacing the architecture and language of old levelling upwell be necessary but not enough. The contributors in this report challenge Labour to look at a more fundamental set of changes spanning education, work, government, and the economy – which can be the foundations of “New levelling up”.
Looking back to 1997, the shift to New Labour was crucial to the party winning the election. In 2024 the shift to levelling up will be more important – it will be essential to whether Labour can change the country.
