Is London being ‘levelled down’ already?

In his ‘levelling up’ speech in Coventry this week, the Prime Minister insisted time and again that this was no ‘zero sum’ game. Improving the fortunes of the poorer parts of the country would not entail levelling richer parts of the country down, he said: ‘Levelling up is not a jam-spreading operation. It’s not robbing Peter to pay Paul…. It’s win-win.’

Well, maybe. But there was good cause for his defensiveness. One reason advanced for the Conservatives’ dramatic defeat in last month’s Chesham and Amersham by-election was apprehension that such places would have to help pay the bill for, say, regenerating Hartlepool. Yes, of course, there were specific reasons for the unhappiness of Tory voters in the Chilterns – HS2, planning changes, and so on – but it was also not unreasonable for people to fear that the cost of breaching the ‘red wall’ could be some serious structural damage to the blue wall elsewhere.