Why Rishi Sunak is wrong to pit towns like Selby against cities like Leeds: Andrew Carter

But cleaving towns and cities apart makes much less sense from an economic perspective. In fact, the evidence suggests the opposite: cities benefit towns and towns benefit cities.

Big cities, like Leeds, matter a great deal to their surrounding areas, as well as to their residents. Leeds accounts for around 36 per cent of all economic output in its wider area and supports hundreds of thousands of jobs. Like many urban centres, it is a hub for knowledge-intensive activity.

Average salaries of people working in the city are higher than the city’s residents, which suggests that a disproportionate amount of this high-skilled, high-paid work is done by those living outside the city, in surrounding towns and countryside.

And the places with a higher share of people commuting to Leeds tend to have higher salaries. Census data and other official data give us a good measure of the extent to which surrounding towns benefit from Leeds. Some reap more benefits than others. This includes Kippax, Garforth, Ilkley and Wetherby, where at least a third of all their high-skilled residents work in Leeds – higher than the share working in their hometown.

But Leeds, like many other big cities in the UK, fails to provide the scale and variety of opportunities that London does for the Southeast. This means that the towns around it and the country are poorer.

Selby and other places like it – such as Pontefract, Castleford and South Elmsall – have far fewer people commuting into Leeds, less than 20 per cent. Selby’s economy is also smaller, generating fewer jobs and – because there are fewer people commuting to Leeds – the incomes of its residents tend to be lower than bigger, more integrated places.

This is a reminder that vibrant high streets and town centres are determined by the amount of disposable income spent in those places. And that income can either be earned in that place or earned somewhere else, like the nearby city. Less disposable income means less money to spend in local shops, cafes, bars, gyms and cinemas.

This shows in high street vacancies. A place, like Pontefract, that has lower average incomes than most places in West Yorkshire also has a high share of vacant retail addresses – over 10 percent in Pontefract’s case. By comparison, the more successful towns in Leeds’ orbit – Wetherby, Garforth and Ilkley – have much lower vacancy rates, below four per cent.

The positive relationship between big cities and their surrounding towns shows why focusing on improving the performance of Leeds and other big cities in the UK is not an argument for ignoring everywhere else. Prosperous cities support prosperous town centres and high streets rather than detract from them.

But it is an argument for developing a more nuanced understanding of the different roles that different places play. Leeds does not play the same role, or have the same potential, as Garforth, Selby or Pontefract.

Despite the big contribution that big cities like Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, and Birmingham make to national prosperity, urban Britain has a long way to go to fulfil its potential to generate the scale and range of opportunities and prosperity that big cities on the European continent do for their countries.

By our estimates, if the UK’s next largest cities after London – Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow – were as productive as their average counterparts in Europe, this could unlock £47 billion in annual economic output.

This is why levelling up has to be treated seriously and why the lack of progress in unlocking the economic potential of our big cities over the last few years has been so disappointing. It is critical to improving the country’s – currently woeful – economic performance.

The current government has not met the challenge it set itself. Although strong on rhetoric and with the occasional displays of boldness – the Trailblazer devolution deals for Greater Manchester and the West Midlands are the best examples of this – progress has been slow and not comparable with the scale of the ambition set out back in 2019.

The next government, whoever it is, needs to go beyond warm words and set out a programme of activity that is commensurate with the scale of the challenge and the size of the prize.

And, as we edge towards a general election sometime next year, politicians of all parties need to resist the urge to pit cities and towns against each other. Selby’s future prosperity is linked to the future prosperity of Leeds.

Andrew Carter is Chief Executive of Centre for Cities.