Two surprises in the past week – a journey to Manchester and a leaked directive from a cabinet minister – push to the same conclusion, underpinned by this month’s local elections. It isn’t a startling one, at least for NS readers, but it is elbowing its way up the agenda: Westminster is now utterly incapable of fixing inequality. A new deal for non-metropolitan England should be at the heart of the next general election.
I mean more than levelling up, crucial though that is. I mean a radical redistribution of power – hence vigour, hence self-confidence – away from London. We have been talking about it forever. But nothing happens. It’s time.
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