Slagging off Liverpool?

The policy exchange had today been widely lambasted for publishing a report which says, essentially, that there is no way some northern cities, including Liverpool, will ever catch up with London and the South East in terms of economy and that one of the best solutions would be to make it easier for people to move from places in the north to the south where there are more jobs.

Everybody from my local MP (Louise Ellmann) to John Prescott to David Cameron has dismissed the report - even though it merely seems to me to be stating the obvious. This city, though I love it very much, will never be as wealthy as London unless there is some dramatic and currently unforeseeable change in the world economy.

But I have two issues. The first, and most important, is to ask whether this really matters. After all though, without a doubt, it's better to be rich than poor I think there are all sorts of reasons for arguing that for many people other factors (presence of family, length of commuting time and social netowrks for example) are also very significant. The simple fact that you'll be better off down south isn't, and shouldn't be, a big enough reason for most people to move there. But, and here I think the Policy Exchange people are spot on, if people want to move we should make it as easy for them as possible.

Secondly the criticism has also disguised the fact that the report said something extremely sensible as well - something that local councillors in Liverpool should be supporting:

"our studies of cities around the world – in Germany and the Netherlands, in Poland, Canada and Hong Kong – demonstrate that local communities manage their affairs better than a distant central government can ever do.... We propose that the Government should roll up current regeneration funding streams and allocate the money to local authorities according to a
simple formula based on the inverse of their average income levels... It would be for local authorities to assess the opportunities, devise a plan for their area and implement it. They would be answerable not to central government, but to local people."

Now that is a good idea - because it only takes a few hundred people to elect or depose a local councillor which makes them much more realistically accountable for what they do with their time than an MP, elected by tens of thousands of people, ever is.

Christians, it seems to me, should always be in favour of spreading power out - because the universal teaching of the Bible is that the greater the centralisation of power in the hands of a few the greater the temptations of the sinful nature to behave in a way that brings misery to many other.

So, and it's not often you'll hear me say this about "David Cameron's favourite think-tank" (not any more!), let's hear it for the Policy Exchange!