Gove: The North is where the action is
The secretary of state reiterated his promise to give more powers to local leaders in a bid to speed up the government’s sluggish levelling up agenda, providing a fillip to local leaders assembled in Liverpool.
“We simply can’t allow the gulf between rich and poor, and North and South to grow,” Michael Gove told a room of political and business leaders.
Gove was speaking at the Convention of the North at The Spine in Liverpool, where figures from across the North gathered to discuss the region’s future following the publication of the government’s Levelling Up White Paper last week.
Read more about the Levelling Up White Paper
On a day of enthusiastic speeches from Northern stakeholders around the ambitions they have for their areas, Gove acknowledged that the North would act as the crucible for levelling up over the next decade.
“This is where the political action will be for the next nine years and beyond,” he said. “Wherever you stand on the political spectrum, or whatever your background, [levelling up the North] has to be the central economic, social and moral mission.”
Gove likened the issues facing the UK’s regions to the situation in Germany following the fall of the Berlin Wall.
He said that inequalities across Germany were “bridged through the effective partnership working between the centre and individual regions and cities”, adding that he wants to take a similar approach when it comes to levelling up.
By giving more powers to areas including Greater Manchester and the Liverpool city region, he hopes to tackle entrenched inequalities in a country that is both “the most geographically unequal, and also the most centralised”.
“With great power comes great responsibility,” Gove said. “We will be seeking to ensure that when we devolve even greater control over the communities that you serve, that we’re also holding each other to account for how money is spent.”
Speaking to Place North West after Gove’s speech, Steve Rotheram, Mayor of Liverpool City Region, seemed hopeful that the secretary of state and the government might be coming to terms with the size of the task in hand.
“I think he was more honest than he has been up to now,” Rotheram said. “He has recognised that [levelling up] needs to be more than warm words, it needs to be something tangible.”
However, while Gove may have a good grasp on what needs to be done to level up the North, actually delivering the agenda will depend on the outcomes of conversations with his department, Northern leaders and the treasury, Gove said.
As the lack of new money in the white paper indicates, it is the final part of that trifactor that may continue to stimy the North’s ambitions.
