Rishi Sunak has long sought to give Britain its very own Silicon Valley. Partially because pseudo-Californian beaches would provide respite from snarling backbenchers, but mainly because creating a European hub for innovation in Britain would be a good way to rejuvenate our sclerotic growth rates.
Hence why today the government is stumping up £2.5 million for a new ‘regional partnership’ driving investment towards Oxford and Cambridge. With two of the world’s leading universities in close proximity, turning swathes of South-East England into a haven for science and technology should be a no-brainer, surely?
Alas, the philosopher John Stuart Mill didn’t label the Conservatives ‘the stupid party’ for nothing. Readers can be forgiven for feeling a sense of déjà vu: the ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc’ plan, similar in many ways, was drawn up by the National Infrastructure Commission in 2017, kicked around by ministers, and finally flushed away by Michael Gove last year.
Slowly but surely, the Tories are pricing themselves out of office
That the Conservatives are now committing money to this not only highlights the party’s current whiplash approach to policymaking, but why Labour look set to win the next election. Even now, the government isn’t committing to the project, merely chucking another couple of million down the rabbit hole. It’s too little, too late – especially as its dithering over the original proposals has stuck two fingers up at my generation’s aspirations and made our struggle to buy a home even more desperate.
Before the project was shelved, the ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc’ aimed to connect the UK’s two leading universities and the manufacturing centre of Milton Keynes. The plan included potentially also reviving the old so-called ‘Varsity’ railway line between the two cities – it had survived Richard Beeching’s railway cuts, but not Harold Wilson’s. The plan involved building around a million new homes and was projected to create up to a similar number of jobs in new industries like cybersecurity and biotechnology.
‘Growth’ was not the political buzzword du jour before Liz Truss flitted in and out of Downing Street. But there is no doubt that the ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc’ would have been a significant victory over the ‘anti-growth coalition’. It was projected to add 3 per cent to GDP, double the area’s contribution to the economy and provide homes and jobs within easy reach of the capital, dreaming spires and concrete cows.
So why was the plan abandoned? Two reasons: one noble, one depressingly predictable. The first was that Gove, flushed with enthusiasm as Levelling Up Secretary, sought to redirect the government’s focus towards tackling regional inequality. Oxford and Cambridge are many things, but the Red Wall or ‘left-behind’ they are not, and any effort to make Britain less imbalanced (and get the Tories re-elected) is naturally more sympathetic to the North than the heartlands of Remoanerdom.
But equalising our uneven economic geography will require more than the paltry £2 billion or so the government handed out to crazy golf courses and over-grown hot houses last week. Closing the gap between North and South is equivalent to Germany’s efforts to equalise living standards between the old West and East. That is still far from being achieved – and by some estimates cost an average of £71 billion between 1990 and 2014.
Consequently, current efforts at ‘levelling up’ barely touch the sides. Of course, if the economy was larger, the government would have more to spend. Hence why backing the ‘Oxford-Cambridge Arc’ versus investing in the North is not an either-or proposition. Unless projects like the this are given a go ahead, Gove’s ‘levelling-up’ cupboard will continue to look bare – especially when the Arc’s area is already the fastest growing in the UK.
But there is a force far stronger in today’s Tory party than economic common sense: Nimbyism. A Campaign for Rural England poll found that 74 per cent of residents were opposed to the Arc’s creation. Local Tory MPs and councillors fulminated about Whitehall diktats. Enough of a fuss was kicked up for Gove to consign it to the governmental lavatory bowl.
Not all members of my party were so inclined. Former housing minister Kit Malthouse called the project a potential ‘example to the world of how to build large numbers of homes for a generation crying out for them’; ex-Chancellor Philip Hammond suggested scrapping the project was ‘making the entire country poorer’.
This support fell on deaf ears. To the Tories, the complaints of constituents today will always outweigh the potential thanks of future homeowners. This is disastrous for my party’s future. At the last election, the Tories led by double digits with homeowners, and trailed by large margins with both social and private renters.
The average age at which someone buys their first house is now 34. Slowly but surely, the Tories are pricing themselves out of office.
Nowhere is this truer than in Oxford. In 1995, a semi-detached house cost £86,000. By the end of last year, it was £633,029. For young people (and former students) like me, settling down there and starting a family remains a fantasy. Oxford East will remain a Labour stronghold for the foreseeable future.
The sad irony of all this is that it will not stop many Tory MPs who buried the Arc and proposals like it from losing their seats. What it will mean is that the same tide of unaffordability that has forced the Tories out of London will continue to spread across the South-East, and beyond.
Today’s £2.5 million is too little, too late. The Conservatives will leave office having wasted an excellent opportunity to make our country richer, and to give my disillusion generation a reason to vote for them.
Comments