It’s just days now before we know who will be running the next government. If the pundits are to be believed Liz Truss will be PM and Jacob Rees-Mogg will be her Minister for Levelling Up. The very concept of levelling up and the transformation of MCLG into DLUHC were of course a Johnson flagship policy in response to the Tory wipe-out of the Red Wall seats in the north of England.

Call it what you will – Northern Powerhouse if you like – restoring prosperity to post-industrial towns remains a Sisyphean task. To quote Bloomberg News from June this year: “The prime minister promised to supercharge Britain by reducing regional inequalities. Two years on […] things are going backwards.”

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