Johnson says UK ‘levelling up’ is a ‘win-win’

(File photo) UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has pledged investment to tackle inequality in parts of Britain, setting out his vision for a “levelling up” strategy which, in a nod to his party, he said would not damage more affluent areas. Johnson, who won a large majority in a 2019 by targeting traditional opposition Labour-supporting voters in northern and central England, wants to return to one of the main pledges he made at the election to help “left-behind” areas of Britain. In a speech which touched on crime, education, transport, housing and green technology, Johnson raised the prospect of devolving more power to smaller regions of Britain to speed up an agenda slowed by the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic. However, critics said there were few specifics on how he will “level up” areas which have for decades felt ignored by successive governments, which have often targeted spending in southern England, beyond a broad theme of more investment. “There is no intrinsic reason why one part of this country should be fated to decline or indeed fated to succeed,” Johnson said in a speech at the UK Battery Industrialisation Centre in the English city of Coventry. “The towns and cities that people say have been left behind have not lacked for human ingenuity ... all they need is the right people to believe in them to lead them and to invest in them and for government to get behind them and that is what we are going to do.” But in a move to quieten concern in his governing Conservative Party that the government is abandoning its traditional voter support base in southern England, Johnson also said he did not “want to level down”. “Levelling up is not a jam-spreading operation, it’s not robbing Peter to pay Paul, it’s not zero-sum, it’s win-win for the whole UK,” he insisted. The British economy is dominated by London and the southeast and a 2020 report for the government found that gaps in economic productivity between the capital and other regions of Britain were as wide as they were in 1901. When asked about the lack of detail, Johnson said he had presented an outline of what his government would do and later his spokesman said he “gave a very clear explanation” of the strategy.