How Brexit derails levelling up – Yorkshire Post Letters

TWO of the most significant UK contributions to the EEC/EU are of fundamental importance to the topical question of levelling up.

The creation of a European regional policy and the completion of the Single European Market.

The creation of the European regional policy was pushed by the UK, Ireland and Italy in the 1970s, and since then has supported regions across the UK, with sometimes transformational effects.

The urban policy expert Professor Michael Parkinson has commented, for example, how EU intervention “saved Liverpool”.

EU support was not just a matter of money, but also the multiannual programmes that allowed places to plan ahead with autonomy and certainty, and draw down funding from central government and the private sector, to match Europe’s commitment.

There is nothing in the hotch-potch of centralised, shorter-term, and politically directed funding programmes that is fitfully emerging to replace EU regional investment, which compares.

Meanwhile, the completion of the Single European Market contributed to the revitalisation of areas hardest hit by the economic restructuring of the 1970s and 1980s.

In contrast, as work by urban and regional economist Professor Philip McCann 
and others shows, ‘Brexit’ is likely to worsen rather 
than reduce regional 
disparities, working against, rather than helping ‘‘levelling 
up’’.

It is notable, for example, that recent figures from the Office for National Statistics show that Northern Ireland – which remains in the EU’s Single Market – is the UK area that has recovered most strongly so far from the impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The road to ‘levelling up’ remains narrow and far from easy. However, the first steps that are needed on the journey are clear.

As a matter of urgency, UK regions need to be reintegrated into the EU Single Market. In the medium term ‘‘Brexit’’ itself needs to be reversed, allowing UK regions to once again fully access the same resources and trading opportunities as their EU counterparts.

No political party which remains in denial of such realities can offer anything more than window dressing in the face of the stubborn challenges of ‘‘levelling up’’.

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