Levelling up: Challenges and opportunities

Abstract

‘Levelling up’ is a new term to add to the economic and political lexicon for the well-known but intractable problem of the uneven performance of the UK economy over the past century. The component parts of the national economy — the regions — mostly have not performed well enough to ensure the UK performs better than its close economic rivals. To convert laggards into leaders can be done, but it requires time, political consensus and a lot of radical thinking: the past tells us very little about the future. A UK economy firing on all cylinders can be a world-beater.