Is the ‘levelling up’ agenda going anywhere?

Is ‘levelling up’ actually going to amount to anything? It’s been well over a year since Boris Johnson talked about it on the steps of Downing Street following his election victory, but of course quite a lot has happened in the intervening few months. It would be perfectly easy for this agenda to end up like David Cameron’s Big Society: with noble aims, a catchy (if also meaningless) tag line – and not much to show for it at the end.

It’s fair to say that many MPs feared this too, which is one of the reasons the Northern Research Group was set up, in order to keep up pressure on the Prime Minister to stick to the commitments he made. Another reason is that lines of communication between the Tory backbenches and No. 10 have not been as strong as they should, both as a result of his PPSs failing to make the inroads they should have done with new MPs in particular during the pandemic, and because of weaknesses in the party’s whipping operation.