Evolving the Levelling Up Agenda: Why Its Enduring Presence is Key to Conservative Success

Co-founder of Whole Nation Conservatives Igraine Gray is a Conservative activist and former council candidate, writer, published author and rehabilitated rough sleeper. Prior to the 2024 General Election she was Policy Assistant to Sir Simon Clarke.

“An agenda for levelling up every part of the UK – not just investing in our great towns and cities, as well as rural and coastal areas, but giving them far more control of how that investment is made. In the 21st century, we need to get away from the idea that ‘Whitehall knows best’ and that all growth must inevitably start in London. Because we as Conservatives believe you can and must trust people and communities to make the decisions that are right for them.” - Conservative Party Manifesto 2019

The idea of ‘levelling up’ has existed in a variety of lesser forms for much of recent political history. But the rebirth of this agenda in 2019 was different. The idea not only persevered but became firmly rooted within our political landscape.

The question is why did it endure this time?

A mandate.

The 2019 general election was a watershed moment in UK politics, building from the catalyst that was the 2016 European Union referendum. Whilst the triggering of Brexit was a defining moment, its biggest impact was in the cultural shift and make-up of the politically engaged. The referendum, which had the highest UK-wide vote turnout since the 1992 general election, saw many who had not voted before finally feel the political class engage with them. Brexit as a word, in and of itself merely meaning the UK's withdrawal from the EU, became loaded with bigger and more emotionally charged ideas - those of sovereignty and self-determination, identity, community, and nation. Fundamentally conservative ideas. 

It showed a yearning for a particularly socially conservative, optimistic view of the United Kingdom and her place in the world, expressed in a single vote. To ‘Take Back Control’ if you will.

Levelling up embodies so many of those principles, on a localised level.

Although the 2019 general election was indeed a vote to ‘Get Brexit Done’, we should not underestimate the power the idea of levelling up had in that election, or indeed underestimate the intrinsic link between the two ideas. Empowered formerly disaffected and disengaged communities, primarily in the North and Midlands of England and definitely outside London, now saw a chance to level the playing field domestically. Even in 2021, two years in and pandemic-weary, polling showed that delivering on this promise to level up was still a significant factor in how people intended to vote (More in Common, November 2021). The idea had not lost its clout.

Paradoxically in the 2024 general election, a historic defeat for the Conservative Party by any measure, levelling up still played an important role. Those 2019, and to a lesser extent 2017 and bellwether, conservative seats gained (or notionally gained) that made great strides on levelling up - Redcar, Rother Valley, Darlington, Ynys Môn, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, Hyndburn, and Blackpool North to name but a few - outperformed expectations, remaining more competitive than many of our traditional strongholds.

Why? Because the belief that, no matter what region or community you come from, you should be able to get on in life and access the same opportunities, is a powerful one. The belief that you should invest and take pride in your local community, unfettering it from rule by London or Brussels alike, is a powerful one. The belief that our rural, coastal, and suburban areas have as much to offer - economically, culturally, and socially - as our inner cities, is a powerful one.

It is the promise that we made, in the 2016 EU referendum and then again more fully in the 2019 general election. As the results this time show, if we are to win again, we must pledge to fulfil that promise.

But we must go further. 

Ultimately, it was not just the collapse in delivery that so defeated us in July. It was the constant narrowing of the scope of the project, ceasing to exist in any meaningful way in a communications sense beyond the funding awards given to communities. It had to evolve past those rudimentary steps to maintain its regenerative, and yes electoral, power.

In its failure to seep into and own all areas of government policy, in its failure to communicate its successes and challenges beyond its headlines, and in its failure to tell an ongoing story of improvement rooted in those Levelling Up Missions set out in the original white paper, its power waned and communities lost faith. In neglecting to manage the expectations of government and embrace the role of the private sector, we stripped it of its ability to mature.

Nowhere is this more keenly illustrated than in the Tees Valley. Now boasting the only Conservative metro mayor in the country, Ben Houchen, the Tees Valley has generally outshone the national party’s electoral performance and is, arguably, the last bastion of the levelling up agenda with a fantastic story. Not only has it been a beneficiary of the government’s centralised funds for community regeneration projects - from central Darlington all the way through to the small town of Loftus at the authority’s boundary - but has also had significant success in public-private partnerships with its freeport status. It has delivered projects like Teesworks, creating new jobs and opening up education opportunities, and built upon initial investments by government, for instance bringing the Treasury to Darlington and commissioning new school buildings. This has started to improve people’s lives from the bottom up, giving them the security and skills they need to have that stake in their local community. A stake as good as anywhere else in the country and in a community that they treasure.

That Teesside story leaves us in the best position for a Conservative comeback, being a story that even now, in the aftermath of parliamentary defeat, still continues on and, most importantly, is supported by its people.

Right here, the Tees Valley shows us not only that levelling up is a winning formula but that it can evolve to something that truly embodies a beloved and aspirational conservatism for the whole nation.

References

More in Common (2021) Everyday Levelling Up, More in Common Briefing Paper, January 2022