If Levelling Up Is For The “Forgotten People” It Has To Involve Them
The established orthodoxies for growth and prosperity that sit at the heart of the ‘levelling up agenda’ have repeatedly failed in their policy aims and failed the people they aim to help. It’s time for change.
In the post-COVID world, we will face an unprecedented triple threat: global recession, a rapidly degrading environment, and enduring inequalities widened further by the global pandemic. To imagine we can overcome these threats with the same economic thinking that repeatedly failed to eradicate inequality before the pandemic, isn’t just deluded, it’s dishonest.
The “Forgotten People”
Standing in Downing Street in the July sunshine of 2019, Britain’s new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, promised to answer “the plea of the forgotten people and the left behind towns”. At the Conservative Party Conference that October, the Prime Minister promised the forgotten people that he would improve the ‘liveability of their town or their village’. Two months later, the forgotten people in over 50 of those left behind towns took the Prime Minister at his word, and delivered him a landslide General Election victory.
Same old same old
It’s difficult to doubt the sincerity of the Prime Minister’s intent, but it is equally difficult to see how unlocking the potential of the whole country to build back better, can be achieved with the same macroeconomic approaches that have repeatedly failed.
When William Beveridge was tasked with leading an interdepartmental committee to plan Britain’s post war recovery he began by examining previous socioeconomic approaches and concluded that these had not set Britain on course toward greater prosperity, and proposed a radically different approach to enabling people — and the Country — to prosper.
The failure to establish a similar interdepartmental committee to plan the post COVID recovery may yet prove to be a mistake, however the very need for a Levelling Up agenda is evidence that previous socioeconomic policies had failed to enable greater — and shared — prosperity. So why are these policies still at the heart of Britain’s Levelling Up agenda?
It’s personal, stupid
James Carville’s “It’s the economy stupid’ has been the lodestar for established political parties on both sides of the Atlantic for almost three decades. But the successes of Trump and Brexit indicate that how people feel about their lives can now hold greater sway over how they vote than concern for the economy.
If Levelling Up is to be felt by the ‘forgotten people’ then it must focus on the relationship between individual lives — their quality, aspiration and purpose — and the larger systems and constraints within which they are embedded. Top down macroeconomic interventions such as investment in road building, might boost GDP, but it leaves the prosperity and feelings of many people literally unmoved.
What is needed is a redefinition of prosperity that is less concerned with aggregate economic wealth and growth, and more attentive to the things that people care about and need — secure and good quality livelihoods, good public services, a clean and healthy environment, planetary and ecosystem health — and a political system that allows everyone to be heard.
People led prosperity
Working with a team of citizen social scientists and community organisations in east London, the Institute for Global Prosperity co-created a completely new definition of ‘prosperity’. Rather than the outmoded and largely meaningless measures of growth, productivity and income, this research identified 15 headline indicators — a ‘Prosperity Index’ — that reflects the actual experience of prosperity for the people in these places.
We discovered that in these parts of east London, secure livelihoods, access to key public services, good quality and genuinely affordable homes, and a sense of inclusion in the economic and social life of the city are the foundations for a prosperous life. Not targets for road building.
The Prosperity Index is driving real change — as Beveridge did in 1942 — creating shared knowledge that allows citizens, local government, businesses and community organisations to collaborate, make decisions, trial radical new approaches, and rapidly evaluate change.
If Britain is to ‘Build Back Better’ it has to build back differently. The success of Metro Mayors is a step in the right direction and further devolution is welcome, but top-down interventions are still top-down even when they’re devised in the local Town Hall rather than Whitehall.
Building Back Better requires a sharing of knowledge. Allowing citizens, local government, businesses and community organisations to collaborate, make decisions, trial radical new approaches, and rapidly evaluate change. Shared knowledge opens up the opportunity to identify innovative policy options and new pathways to prosperity that are more targeted and more effective at improving quality of life.
Setting aside top down, target led policy making, and adopting a collaborative and inclusive approach can bridge the widening participation gap, help repair the fractured trust between citizens and governments, and give people access to the tools, skills and relationships that enable them to prosper.
Building Back Better requires us to replace our economy of division and inequality with an economy in which everyone has a place — an economy of belonging that will deliver secure livelihoods for all, enhance quality of life, and foster the long-term prosperity of people and places.
