What’s the purpose of the levelling up white paper?

After months of delays, the government’s levelling up white paper is finally out. Boris Johnson has viewed this document as one of the things that will help him kickstart his premiership after months of negative headlines over partygate. However, MPs remain jumpy as letters of no confidence continue to trickle in. 

As for the document itself, it comes in at a cool 332-pages and can be described as academic in places. While it sets out key missions, it is also heavy on history — complete with a timeline of the largest cities in the world since 7,000 BC including Jericho, Dobrovody, Yinxu and Ayutthaya. The biblical city, the paper states, ‘had natural irrigation from the Jordan River, allowing it to produce and export the most expensive essential oil in the ancient world’. Pages are devoted to Gove’s favoured ‘Medici model’ as an example of how today’s agenda can learn from 15th century Renaissance Italy: 

Across Europe, the Renaissance period in Italy and the Golden Age in Holland offered examples of similar periods of transformative, city-centric growth.