If he truly wants to deliver on his Big Idea, the prime minister will have to surrender power and money to local leaders
In the first flush of his 2019 election triumph, Boris Johnson stood outside Number 10 and flourished a promise to “unite and level up” the country. He likes this theme so much that he has returned to it repeatedly. In so much as Mr Johnson has a “Big Idea”, this is it. Yet, from its genesis, there has been confusion about what he means by levelling up. It is not just external sceptics who complain that it is a slogan unaccompanied by either philosophy or strategy. The Tory MP Laura Farris recently remarked that it is “an ambiguous phrase” that “means whatever anyone wants it to mean”.
This criticism has been getting to the prime minister. In May, he brought a new recruit into the centre of government. He appointed Neil O’Brien, the Conservative MP for Harborough in Leicestershire, to lead policy development on the subject and tasked him with producing a white paper for this autumn. Those who genuinely believe in levelling up were encouraged by this appointment. Mr O’Brien is among the rare Tories who have been thinking about regional inequalities and what to do about them for many years. He has only been in post a few weeks, so it would be harsh to blame him for the fact that the prime minister’s most recent attempt to explain what is supposed to be his defining mission has been received with about as much enthusiasm as a cup of cold sick. Dominic Cummings, his former chief adviser turned chief tormentor, ridiculed it as a “crap speech (same he’s given pointlessly umpteen times) supporting crap slogan”.
