Austerity is grinding on – it has cut too deep to ‘level up’ | John Harris

In places such as Newcastle, budget cuts have taken a heavy toll. Much of what has closed is not coming back

Seven years ago, pretty much to the week, I paid my first visit as a journalist to Newcastle upon Tyne. The ostensible reason was a fuss about the city council's proposal to cut its arts budget to zero, and a campaign of opposition endorsed by such alumni of the city as Bryan Ferry and Gordon "Sting" Sumner. But that controversy was only a small, distracting aspect of a much bigger story: the fact that the coalition government's austerity was now threatening some of the most basic parts of Newcastle's social fabric, as councillors faced cuts of around 100m, spread over three years. Then as now, they were led by Nick Forbes, the imaginative, engaging politician who remains in post, and is these days also the leader of the Local Government Association's Labour group, which represents councillors from across England and Wales, and had its annual conference at the weekend.

37m was cut in 2013-14, followed by 38m, then 40m and so on, until the council had lost 300m by the end of 2019

Related: Tory plans to 'level up' the north are laughably inadequate | Polly Toynbee