Well that didn’t go to plan.
The era-defining crash and burn of Liz Truss’s short-lived premiership ushers in what might well be the endgame for a shape-shifting succession of Conservative leaders since 2010.
In seeking to correct the disastrous course of his immediate predecessor and bail out the rising bilgy waters from a somewhat stricken ship of state, Rishi Sunak’s options are limited. On one hand he is hemmed in by the mid-November fiscal statement and its spending restrictions. On the other, the straitjacket of parliamentary management, political calculus and as time goes on, the sheer lack of road in the run up to the next General Election will tell.
Mr Sunak began his prime ministerial career acknowledging mistakes were made by his immediate predecessor. His way will not be that of the wild and wide-eyed Tufton Street school of think-tanks offering a version of Reaganomics and radical supply side reforms over fracking, planning and investment zones.
The latter might well prove for local government to be another largely fruitless exercise in following the ball – not that there is a great wealth of other opportunities. The ambition of the programme is likely to be scaled back from this months’ spending announcement, although it should be remembered that the freeport concept is one to which Prime Minister Sunak is fiercely wedded to having written the playbook on them from his time in the policy world.
The blueprint to Mr Sunak’s growth strategy was laid out earlier in the year in February, when, as chancellor, he delivered the Mais Lecture to the Bayes Business School. Here he spoke of a new culture of enterprise based on three priorities of capital, people and ideas – an economy where businesses invest more, people of all ages are supported to learn and where ideas and innovation power social and economic transformation.
So, on a technocratic level, this will witness a return to the more avowedly strategic intervention from central government, a resumption of acknowledged industrial strategy – despite his repudiation of it Kwasi Kwarteng never defanged ‘IS’ from the name of his department. With Michael Gove picking up from where he left off at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the prime levelling up objective will once more be to reduce geographic economic inequality. The scope for Mr Gove to assist in getting capital funds to flow uphill into parts of the country that aren’t as investible propositions as the greater South East is a moot point.
Given where we are in the electoral cycle, there is a greater call for sluicing out the money available from Whitehall to fill all corners and immediately. From speaking to Conservative MPs at the recent party conference, the state and condition of local high streets and town centres is of deep concern at all levels. The open anxiety expressed was that beyond the hanging baskets, there will be little concrete proof of levelling up having shifted the dial on pride in place come polling day.
Indeed, the brand of compassionate Conservatism which Sunak has outlined and has determined to express might prove impossible to deliver on before then. Which isn’t to say that he can’t make the moral case for fusing the economic choices with empathy and the moral imagination.
In his Mais Lecture, Mr Sunak said Adam Smith did not think the underlying driver of the market was greed but ‘the universal and laudable desire to better the condition of ourselves and those we love’.
In acknowledging the limits of the free market and the ‘perennial gales’ of disruption and dislocation, the PM’s philosophy sees levelling up as an inherently moral case to yoke freedom with human dignity. In this sense localism is allied to preserving the bonds of family and community – and in levelling up terms building pride in place.
In her short but disastrous reign, Ms Truss failed to answer the question of how we accelerate growth and restore public faith in market forces. The perennial gales of political fortune will shape how much time and opportunity Mr Sunak has to provide his answer and realise his own ideas and ideals for rejuvenating national productivity and social prosperity through a renewed culture of enterprise.With this in mind, local government should continue to present the case for itself as a key partner for growth and remain steadfast in patiently making the continued economic and fiscal devolution that can supply – without Treasury handouts – the sub-regional funding for the physical and social infrastructure that would have to underpin a culture of enterprise.
Jonathan Werran is chief executive of Localis
@Localis
