This may surprise you but, on a personal level, I have some sympathy for Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak. Alongside David Miliband, Andrea Leadsom and David Davis, I am among 0.001 per cent of the British public who has come second in a leadership election.
I know something of how it feels to be them. Right now, everything they do and say, or have done or said, is subject to the most unforgiving commentary.
When video emerged of a young Rishi talking about his experience of class, and correcting himself on his lack of working-class friends, it reminded me of my own excruciating brush with Britain’s class system in 2015.
With entirely innocent timing, at the height of the Labour leadership election, the Department of Health released ministers’ replies to letters from the Prince of Wales. Within minutes, Twitter was ablaze with pictures of a letter with the following words undeniably penned in my own fair handwriting: “Your humble and obedient servant…”
So I am prepared to make some allowances. But I draw the line at the big pitch these two candidates are making.
There is a big difference between the leadership races I was in, the one in 2007 when Gordon Brown replaced Tony Blair, and this Tory contest. Here, the candidates are promising to use a mandate given by the public in 2019 for one purpose and now use it for another. Both are promising variations on the same theme: to be Thatcherite Prime Ministers; low-tax, deregulatory, small state, Right-wing.
How does all that sit with the core promise that won their 80-seat majority: to level up the North with the South?
Not at all well, I would say. The North of England did not fare well in the Eighties and Nineties under Mrs Thatcher. Many of her policies are the reason we are today in need of levelling up. For example, deregulation in that period left everywhere outside London with buses people can’t afford to use. Only this week, the Court of Appeal upheld my decision as Mayor of Greater Manchester to put buses back under public control after 36 years of rising fares, routes cut and fewer passengers.
When it comes to education, I have a similar recollection to Liz Truss. It was not easy to be in a Northern comprehensive back then with the decimation of school sport and crumbling buildings. But it didn’t make me a Conservative; it actively turned me against them. My recollection is that it was the teachers and the schools who were fighting to give the kids a sense of ambition despite having two hands tied behind their backs by Mrs T.
The low-tax, small-state approach of the Eighties and early Nineties left Britain with struggling public services, crumbling infrastructure and stripped the North of its industry. And with both remaining candidates now promising to prioritise across-the-board tax cuts, you have to fear the worst for the promises of “levelling up”.
I am sure there are some in London and the South who are quietly pleased about this. But I would ask them to think it through. It would be profoundly dangerous for the country if “levelling up” were to be abandoned. If nothing else, it would destroy any remaining vestige of trust in our politics if a majority gained for one purpose was used to do the opposite. If that’s the intention of these candidates, no ifs or buts: they must call a General Election.
Beyond this, I can’t see how a return to the Eighties would be good for London. An era of Thatcherite, small-state government would not re-balance the economy but continue the over-heating of the South East, with all of the negative consequences for housing.
I can see why some in London fear an open-ended commitment to levelling up. To answer that, let’s take this moment to define it more clearly. If it was more narrowly re-focused on giving the North comparable rail infrastructure with the South and, specifically, a Crossrail for the North, is that something that London could get behind?
It is no exaggeration to say that Britain is on the brink. Where we go next has profound implications for us all.
It is exactly 10 years since the opening ceremony of London 2012. I will never forget watching Danny Boyle’s vivid depiction, in the heart of east London, of how the industry of the North helped build modern Britain. It was such a unifying moment and, whatever happens in the coming weeks, let’s hold on to that sentiment. We will be a better country in the future if all people and places prosper together.
