Last Word: ‘Levelling up’: a Political Failure?
| Author | Lawrence McKay |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/20419058231167272 |
| Published date | 01 March 2023 |
| Date | 01 March 2023 |
40 POLITICAL INSIGHT • MARCH 2023
Last Word
‘Levelling up’: a Political Failure?
Rather than cementing their support in the Red Wall, a Conservative flagship policy now risks
alienating voters across the country, writes Lawrence McKay.
It can be hard to believe that just a couple
of years ago, commentators were talking
sincerely of Conservative ‘hegemony’ in
British politics. With a comfortable majority
and a more pliant parliamentary party, Boris
Johnson’s government was free to pursue
what he called the ‘people’s priorities’ of Brexit
and ‘levelling up’. This agenda would stake out
a new centre-ground in British politics. Voters
in towns in the North and Midlands, who had
‘lent’ their votes to the Conservatives, were to
be turned into a new electoral bloc.
Levelling up was (and is) an ideologically
incoherent agenda, but its political logic
was far stronger. Its appeal was rooted
in widespread discontent at long-term
local decline, at the increasing visibility of
regional inequalities and in the sentiment
that successive governments had taken an
uncaring approach to the places they called
home. It understood that following an era of
austerity, there is no more tangible signal of
a government’s priorities than where and on
what public money is spent.
Policies such as the Towns Fund, Future High
Streets Fund and the Levelling Up Fund put
this into practice. An old-fashioned process of
Whitehall ‘picking winners’ has been restyled as
a kind of political game-show: announcement
days now come with a level of anticipation
and political theatre akin to budget days. In
politico-speak, the ‘optics’ of levelling up for
the Conservatives are excellent. But in practice,
these events have proved a lightning rod
for discontent, both within and beyond the
Conservative Party. There is a genuine puzzle
on our hands: how did an agenda with such
ostensibly broad appeal become yet another
political headache for the government in
Westminster?
In May 2022, I was involved in running a
major piece of survey research into levelling
up. We assembled an enormous, nationally-
representative sample of 20,000 YouGov
panelists and probed into many topics: their
sense of pride in place, what problems they
had locally, and many more. We wanted to
understand how voters would really respond to
tangible choices and trade-os in levelling up.
In the rst experiment, we sought to test
whether the process of levelling up matters: its
transparency, degree of local involvement, and,
in particular, how the decision to fund a project
was made. This ‘conjoint’ experiment isolates
how individual features of a proposal matter
most, by randomly generating a series of
proposals for a levelling up project in their area
and making people choose between them.
We found that, systemically, people showed
greater support for more transparent proposals
and ones that involved the community.
Furthermore, people tended to prefer a
process out of the hands of ministers (either
judged by experts or on a needs-based
formula). As currently implemented, levelling
up is a more top-down process which allows
for ministerial discretion, and thus runs counter
to these expressed preferences.
In the second experiment, we presented
respondents with a news item regarding
whether their area had been deemed ‘high
priority’ or ‘low priority’ for levelling up (against
a control group receiving no information). This
recognised that not all areas would be winners
of levelling up. The treatments were chosen
based on the real priority category assigned to
dierent areas by the Department for Levelling
Up, Housing and Communities.
There was some upside to being ‘high
priority’; ‘treated’ respondents in the high
priority category were more likely to support
the Levelling Up Fund and to feel the
government cared about their area. But on
the ipside, we saw slightly larger eects for
the low priority group: treated respondents
showed a ‘backlash’ against the fund and were
more likely to agree that ‘the government cares
less about my area than other parts of the
country’. A competitive, zero-sum approach
therefore, has real potential to alienate its
many ‘losers’ (including, perhaps, parts of
the relatively auent ‘Blue Wall’ of southern
Conservative seats).
This reveals the political failure of levelling
up, which some have seen as contingent
(rocked by COVID, Ukraine and executive
dysfunction) but is in fact structural. The
goodwill generated from one’s area being
‘picked’ is mirrored by the ill-will of being
rejected and, moreover, both groups dislike
the idea that they can be simply ‘picked’ or
‘rejected’ in the rst place.
Already, this approach is fraying. It has come
under re from powerful Conservatives such
as West Midlands Mayor Andy Street, who
has condemned the ‘begging bowl culture’ it
creates. In November, journalist Isabel Hardman
reported that, according to Conservative
insiders, current Levelling Up Secretary Michael
Gove is no great fan of the approach. The
Labour opposition, meanwhile, pitches a new
approach via its ‘Take Back Control Bill’, an
ambitious proposal to devolve money and
powers to councils. However, any incumbent
of Number 10 will face the temptations of
patronage and the pork-barrel. Whether
Westminster can wean o its centralising habits
is a key question for the years to come.
Lawrence McKay is a British Academy Post-
doctoral Research Fellow at the University
of Southampton.
Funding priority affects support for levelling up policy
No treatment
Losers’ treatment
Winners’ treatment
50 55 60 65 70 75
Support for levelling up fund %
• High priority areas • Low priority areas
n=13,480, eldwork 19 Apr-1 May 2022, YouGov/Kings College London
Political Insight March 2023 BU.indd 40Political Insight March 2023 BU.indd 40 27/02/2023 13:5027/02/2023 13:50
To continue reading
Request your trial