Michael Gove has promised that levelling up is alive and well, and guided by the “spirit” of Margaret Thatcher.
Speaking to the Convention of the North in Manchester yesterday, the levelling up secretary hit back at claims that the latest round of levelling up funding was a top-down exercise, or that it forced local areas to fight over a “begging bowl” of handouts, to use the words of Conservative West Midlands mayor Andy Street.
Gove said Thatcher’s regeneration of London’s Docklands was in fact the inspiration for the current iteration of levelling up.
“The original vision for regeneration of the area – from the Treasury of the time – was simple. Just cut taxes and deregulate and 1,000 flowers would bloom in the dusty and contaminated soil of the Docklands. But while lower taxes and smarter regulation are certainly powerful ingredients in any growth package, they just weren’t enough,” he said, in a thinly veiled dig at former prime minister Liz Truss’s approach.
“Margaret Thatcher, and her then industry secretary Keith Joseph tasked the then environment secretary Michael Heseltine with bringing together a wider range of interventions through the London Docklands Development Corporation.
“Land was assembled and remediated through government agencies, new transport links were built, including the DLR and what was to become London City Airport, new housing was commissioned and in due course cultural, sporting and educational investment followed. The area thus irrigated became fertile ground for massive commercial investment. Government created the environment, the private sector created the jobs. London Docklands today is an economic success story – one of the most signal success stories we owe to Mrs Thatcher’s government.
“And it is that spirit that animates our levelling-up policies, active government. And that spirit is there most vividly our plans for new investment zones.”
He added that his team will shortly begin “a process to identify investment zones in areas that need levelling up”.
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