The Guardian view on Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’: there’s no quick fix | Editorial
After an election governments tend to do two things. First, ministers take advantage of their opponent's disarray by framing the script for the next parliament with a compelling narrative, deploying catchphrases that will make their story stick in the public's memory long after the headlines have faded. Second they administer the bitter pill of spending restraint, so that fiscal goodies can be doled out ahead of the next election. BorisJohnson is bucking the trend by doing the first but not the second. He has taken high-stakes gambles to win power. Whether his latest bet pays off will depend on how right the prime minister proves to be about both politics and economics.
Mr Johnson says he wants to keep the Labour votes he says were "lent" to the Conservatives in December's election. At the top of the new government's agenda is the idea of "levelling up" and squashing regional inequalities. This is a desirable goal, not least in swathes of the country where people have been left feeling disenfranchised and ignored. But this will take time. There is no quick fix to tackle entrenched problems such as: why pupils in the poorest areas in the north are four times more likely to attend schools graded less than good than their London counterparts; or why men in Manchester can expect to die nine years younger than those in leafy Hampshire; or why the average northern worker produces 4 less per hour than their counterpart in the south.
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