Even if Boris Johnson comes good on promises to build big in the north, the economy’s centre of gravity will stay where it is
All governments love building things. Fascists, communists, social democrats, even conservatives who demand austerity in other matters – politicians can rarely resist the potential rewards of commissioning new infrastructure. From announcement to construction to opening, new public amenities provide ministers with multiple opportunities to show voters that their administration is making a difference.
“Infrastructure improves everyday life,” said the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, in March. “This is why I created the levelling-up fund … to invest £4.8bn in high-value local infrastructure.” Such investment, said the fund’s prospectus, was about “giving people pride in their local communities; bringing more places across the UK closer to opportunity; and demonstrating that government can visibly deliver”.
Presented in this kind of uplifting language, as they usually are, new transport links and other such projects seem free of ideology and party politics, which may be especially appealing to voters in an acrimonious era. But state infrastructure is not really neutral at all. Where it’s sited, whom it benefits, what is considered an acceptable cost: these are intensely political considerations. For the current government, which owes its majority to new Tory seats in northern England and the Midlands that have been neglected by the state for decades – or feel that they have been – providing new bridges or bypasses is a potentially crucial way of demonstrating that Conservatism has changed.
One problem with this strategy, at least for voters in these areas, is that with infrastructure, as with much else, Boris Johnson has a history of promising but not delivering. A garden bridge across the Thames, a new airport on an artificial island off the Kent coast, a bridge or tunnel to Northern Ireland: all of these eye-catching ideas have been promoted by the Tories’ great salesman, and none have been built. So far, they have not been concrete projects so much as unsubtle political signals – of Johnson’s optimism, personal ambition and disregard for difficult practical details. In a country that voted for the barely sketched future of Brexit, offering near-fantasies can get a politician long way. But the day will come when even the Conservatives’ most suggestible new voters expect them to actually build something.
Another problem is that even the grandest completed projects don’t always change the country as expected. Forty years ago this month, the Queen opened the Humber Bridge, then the biggest single-span suspension bridge in the world. A bridge across the Humber estuary, connecting the isolated port city of Hull with the east Midlands and the south, had been proposed for more than a century. Yet it did not get decisive backing until 1966, when the Labour prime minister, Harold Wilson, faced a tricky byelection in Hull. Labour promised a bridge and held the seat.
But construction problems and other delays ate up another 15 years. By the bridge’s completion, Hull was declining and Britain was in crisis, with an unpopular Margaret Thatcher presiding over riots and deindustrialisation. The enormous, sweeping bridge offered a rare chance for national pride. The Queen called it “a splendid advertisement for British engineering”, and the opening ceremony featured a flypast by the Red Arrows, the RAF jets roaring over the bridge towers out of an otherwise grey sky. It’s easy to imagine Johnson appearing at similar ceremonies in a few years’ time.
Related: England’s infrastructure projects will be ‘nature positive’, ministers vow
