The right’s ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ notion has been debunked - Yorkshire Post Letters

“London being cut down to size” post-Brexit is an opportunity for places such as Leeds and Sheffield to “level up”, claims columnist Martin Towers (London’s wane could be chance for the North, May 17).

Has such ‘beggar-thy-neighbour’ economics ever worked? Better that London be successful and our country become better at sharing opportunities created.

I recall in the 1990s how the Bank of England kept pushing up interest rates to curb inflation, largely caused by economic overheating in the South East. That pushed up the value of the pound and cost of exports in industrial areas of the North and Midlands …hitting regional economies yet to benefit from the South’s economic buoyancy.

A more fluid, sharing economy has to be planned for, though. Thus, I despaired when just the Leeds leg of HS2 was scrapped; never mind the whole project subsequently being cancelled - with the prospect of just a 140-mile London to Birmingham ‘Sunak’s Folly’ left to remind future generations how short-sighted these Tories have been these past 14 years.

Mr Towers thinks the North will benefit because “bright young things” will have fewer opportunities to pursue investment banking jobs in ‘The Smoke’. But those jobs go instead to places like Paris, Frankfurt and Dublin - not Pontefract, Filey or Doncaster. That doesn’t benefit them, or UK plc.

The far right’s ‘Singapore-on-Thames’ notion has been debunked; “Trussonomics” hopefully its last hurrah. The corruption of it to ‘Singapore-on-Sea’ by Mr Towers is pointless and bewildering.

His depressing, desperate struggle to concoct a Brexit benefit for Yorkshire did at least remind me of a much more cheerful, better integrated vision for Britain you reported on recently (‘We need jobs created in West Yorkshire’, the Mayor of London says - April 4).

Sadiq Khan said: “London doing well is not at the expense of other parts of the country …we only do well when other parts of the country do well.”

Happy to be pictured alongside Mr Khan was Rachel Reeves, Leeds West MP and Shadow Chancellor. Given Mr Khan’s recent success in the mayoral elections, I hope the woman who wants to be in 11 Downing Street later this year is paying closer attention to what’s said by one of the few senior figures in the Labour Party unafraid to acknowledge Brexit’s done enormous economic damage …to our whole country, not just London. It needs to be undone. Enough of the spurious “potential Brexit benefits”, please.