“great Britain This country has the highest regional disparities compared to other developed countries. They are larger than those between east and west German and north and south Italy. That new technologyThat global competitionThat the disappearance of old industries -and it lack of support to the new one—they promoted that division.”

So begins the report “Why isn’t UK regional policy working?”, published last week. Co-written by Ed Ball, the former Labor shadow chancellor, is the second in the series. The previous report, published in March, examined regional policy failures great Britain. This was asked by key policy makers, including three prime ministers (John Major, Tony Blair And Gordon Brown), what lessons can be learned from this incident.

Here are the key takeaways: growing regional divisions are not inevitable, but repairing them is difficult; Second, “previous policies to grow the regional economy great Britain they have geographic bias and they are not ambitious enough”; Third, the government is too dependent on the government centralized approach to achieve more balanced growth English; fourth, policy instability causes short-term and detrimental impacts; Fifth, sustained political will at the highest levels and leadership are needed to overcome centralizing tendencies white hall and giving powers to local governments; Sixth, cross-party support for a “joint authority” model, in which local governments work together within city areas, could produce a workable consensus.

However, there are still large differences of opinion. For example, what should be the main drivers of growth in the UK region and what level of decision making is appropriate? To what extent should it happen white hall Who is pushing for comprehensive reform in local government? Lastly, how it should be regional reactivation? How to balance the arguments in favor of greater autonomy and regional fiscal responsibility?

What is most surprising about these conclusions is their accuracy in exposing major weaknesses in governance and the economy great Britain.

This is not surprising. As I have argued in previous columns on this topic, extreme regional productivity differences are a consequence of both Economic forcesespecially deindustrialization and revival London as world financial center, as well as failure in politics. The latter reflects a combination of advantages centralizationaddicted political tricksA myopic too famous and hope that economymost are left to their own devices, solving their own problems.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Big deindustrialization from That was Thatcher did not cause the blooming of thousands of new economic flowers across the country. On the contrary, this causes excessive concentration of economic activity in one area. What’s worse, the trees that were once lush are no longer what they used to be. London It’s rich, but it’s no longer as dynamic as it used to be.

What this report identifies is something bigger than that problem regional economy. Identify fundamental and deep-seated weaknesses economy, government And policy English.

With this in mind, it is hard to believe that the profound failures identified in this and other reports, particularly in government white papers aimed at raising policy levels, will be able to be addressed by any government. Some even argue that this is impossible: regional differences are inevitable. On the contrary, we must be even more persistent laissez-faire and encouraged people to migrate south.

Take that into account London and the southeast represents only 27 percent of the population, that is clearly impossible.

Greater effort is required prosperity across the country. Therefore, regional politics should not be considered as something separate, but as the center of any sensible strategy growth, which must be national and regional at the same time. This has become a major political, institutional and economic challenge.

However, what I take away from the regrets of past failures is how difficult the task was. ¿great Britain will be able to correct the failures that caused it to become so large regional disparities and even low growth? Unfortunately, I doubt it.

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