Ending the failure of regional policy – why Starmer must avoid ‘hyper-active incrementalism’

Drawing on a recent article, Dave Richards and Jack Newman highlight the churn in policy initiatives aimed at tackling regional inequality. They argue that for the new government to be effective where other governments have failed, Labour will have to overcome ‘hyper-active incrementalism’ – ‘hyperactive’ because of the constant tinkering, and ‘incremental’ because ultimately very little actually changes. This article was originally published by UK in a Changing Europe.

Within a week of Labour’s election victory, the ‘levelling up’ slogan was no more; and the Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Communities returned to being the Ministry of Housing, Communities, and Local Government. Labour’s manifesto made no mention of levelling-up, and an overhaul of the whole levelling up machinery will presumably shortly follow: the missions, funding, strategy documents, delivery teams, and numerous Whitehall job titles.

Rewind to 2022 and the Johnson government’s Levelling Up White Paper. It promised to finally tackle the UK’s deeply entrenched spatial inequalities but may end up as little more than a footnote in history. Yet the white paper was unusually forthright about the repeated failure of previous governments – from both left and right – to address the UK’s geographic imbalances.

The white paper’s critique exposed the speed at which government-defining policy projects rise and fall, leaving a trail of waste in their wake. The policymaking machine has burnt through considerable time, money and resources on levelling up. There is a risk that the same pattern is now set to be repeated.

At least since the 1940s, successive UK governments have sought to tackle the geography of inequality and redevelop less prosperous places. The rapid rise and fall of Johnson’s levelling up agenda is symptomatic of a familiar pattern. The chart below shows the extent to which spatial policy agendas are created, then swiftly abolished, and then sometimes resurrected, with the whole cycle starting again.

And despite all this, the underlying problem persists: the UK remains one of the most spatially unequal developed countries. In more affluent places, people live longer, experience better mental health, higher quality educational and skills provision, more rewarding jobs and nicer work conditions, more efficient transport links, larger and higher quality housing… and so the list goes on. As well as the injustice of this, it also a fundamental weakness of the UK economy. The comparative underperformance of both its second cities and broader geographies is widely acknowledged to inhibit productivity growth.

Given this, and the political disaffection that continues to grow in so-called ‘left-behind places’, the Starmer government is understandably keen to address the geography of inequality.

Our new research for the Productivity Institute highlights the challenges the new government will need to overcome if it is to be successful.

The relationship between Britain’s highly centralised political system and the geography of inequality is widely recognised. Our research reveals previous efforts to tackle regional inequality form a pattern of small-scale reforms reflecting an incoherent, ineffective and ad hoc approach.   The British system – organised as it is around a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all, electoral system and characterised by a top-down, minister-dominated model of government, with centralised-accountability and limited veto points – perpetuates a widely acknowledged set of problems: centralisation, siloisation, short-termism and implementation gaps.

Over-centralisation leads to a ‘Westminster knows best’ mind-set and with it a culture in which ministers are drawn to constantly intervening from within their departmental fiefdoms. And high ministerial churn lends itself to ‘hyperactive ministers’. New minsters regularly arrive keen to make an impression on the department by addressing previous policy shortcomings. The tendency is for policy initiatives to be rolled-out in ad hoc ways but without systematically addressing the problem. This leads to an on-going cycle of micro-interventions, but overall policy failure.

An examination of previous efforts to tackle regional inequality reveals a set of persistent problems: short-termism: lacking medium-to long-term focus; under-evaluation: insufficiently tested and evidence-based, often repeating previous mistakes; reactive: formulated in response to everyday political demands, rather than prioritising a ‘preventive policymaking’ approach; fragmented: siloed and segmented in fashion, rather than holistic, system-wide and joined-up; incremental: creating a layering process where reforms are grafted onto existing approaches in an adaptive manner; and top-down: developed at the political centre.

We call this pattern of policymaking ‘hyper-active incrementalism’. ‘Hyperactive’ because of the constant tinkering, and ‘incremental’ because ultimately very little actually changes.

The real challenge for the Starmer government is whether its ‘mission-led’ governance strategy will offer a distinct alternative. It is an approach not wholly dissimilar to the Blair government’s use of task-forces in 1997, operating outside of departmental boundaries to address longer-term policy failings in a more joined-up, strategic fashion. Yet task-forces never meaningfully overcame the dominant power and resources of departments.

While it is too early to cast judgement on the Starmer approach, these lessons from the Blair era need learning. Devolving power and creating a more joined-up, strategic partnership with actors beyond Whitehall will be necessary to overcome these challenges.

How Labour pursues English devolution will be crucial. Starmer generated fanfare in his first week as Prime Minister by inviting existing metro mayors to Number 10 to ‘begin the process of shifting power out of Westminster through a major programme of devolution’. Angela Rayner, as Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government then followed up with a letter to local authorities encouraging ‘devolution deserts’ to seek new powers. And the King’s Speech promised to introduce an English Devolution Bill.

The real challenge, though, is whether Labour’s approach will manage to overcome the longstanding tendencies in regional policy we identify. This will require a change in mindset about regional policy and English devolution – away from central government trying to solve local economic problems.

Instead, the government needs to think how it can create a robust system of local and regional governance that empowers places to solve their own problems. And it requires treating the UK’s political system as a system, rather than each devolution or funding initiative being considered in isolation with a cost-benefit approach. The payoffs could be huge: joined-up policy solutions, policy innovation across the country, reinvigorated democracy, to name just a few.

By Dave Richards, Professor of Public Policy, University of Manchester and Dr Jack Newman, Research Associate, The Productivity Institute, University of Manchester.