Theresa May will need more than warm words to revive left-behind Britain | Peter Hetherington
City versus town? It might seem a facile debate in a small country where the interests of both should be aligned. What's the difference, apart from size? Quite a lot, actually. For the past few decades, lobbying by a group of large cities has placed big population centres at the forefront of what remains of urban policy. Larger cities were seen as the engines of growth, portrayed as the economic saviours for surrounding communities. A contestable point, certainly. But these cities found a welcoming ear in government.
The government responded with devolution deals to create combined authorities, led by mayors, in six city-regions, including Greater Manchester, the West Midlands and Merseyside. But Theresa May went cool on the idea, instead preferring to reinvigorate "Brexit Britain": those places which voted leave in June 2016. The PM even popped into a village up the hill from my Tyneside home to reassure the north (62 of the 73 local authority areas in northern England voted leave) that she was determined to deliver equity across the country: "It is my mission to make sure that ... no community is left behind as we plan both our domestic agenda and our Brexit strategy," she said.
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