Boris Johnson reshaped the electoral map – but doing the same for the economy will be a much bigger challenge

The political map has been utterly transformed. The economic map will be much harder to shift. But it has to be done, not just to show the new Conservative voters in the north of England that this government can deliver for them, but more profoundly because our uneven economic performance is holding back the country as a whole.

The political left failed, for the north/south imbalance increased under the Labour governments from 1997 to 2010. The Tory-led coalition from 2010 to 2015 and the two subsequent Tory governments also failed, because though there may have been some slight narrowing of income differentials, it was minimal. So what happens now?

Well, the first thing to acknowledge is that political imperatives may sometimes be different from economic ones. We will see that in the coming year in that there will be a difficult choice in the EU trade negotiations. Politics means we have to get right back to concerns like fishing rights, but economics means we have to protect the City’s foreign exchange exports.

There is also a clash between the short term and the longer term. Short-term economic interests pull for the closest possible trade deal with Europe. But that would require both closing the door to trade deals with the rest of the world, and adopting European regulation. In the longer term, it would better both to try to rebalance our trade relations with faster-growing economies (interesting idea that we might join the revised Trans-Pacific Partnership) and help develop global regulatory standards rather than adopting European ones.

What then, in practical terms, can the government do? Here are three broad areas to think about.

One is to create a mechanism where businesses in the midlands and north can make their views heard in Westminster and Whitehall. I am not sure of the best way of doing this. There is the idea of the Northern Powerhouse, but that is a top-down branding exercise. This is something different. We do not need another lobby group, but rather to find some way of unblocking communications between local businesses and decision-makers. We have a group of new MPs who can help and this is something for them to think about.

A second area for action is a rethink of infrastructure. The links are all with London: HS2, if it is ever built, would bring Birmingham into the London commuter belt, by cutting journey time to 52 minutes, shorter than London to Brighton. That does not sound like a great idea. That should, therefore, be the starting point for the rethink, asking, what else could be done with the money – the economic concept of opportunity cost.

The third area that the government needs to look at is what has worked well already and what works well abroad. There is the lazy approach to economic redevelopment that the governments adopt everywhere in the world, which is to use public money almost as a bribe. Ministers like opening new buildings. Public sector jobs are shifted out of London to the regions, whether or not there is an economic case for doing so. There is, of course, a moral case for making sure that all parts of the country have equal access to good public services. But this is not about that. Rather, it is about trying to understand why some cities outside London are doing pretty well, while others are fighting against headwinds: Leeds versus Sheffield, for example.

It is also about trying to learn from other countries. How did Barcelona use the 1992 Olympics to reinvigorate its economy? How is Detroit, facing far greater challenges than anywhere in the UK, just starting to turn itself around? How did Copenhagen become the “go-to” city for anyone interested in urban planning?

I think the starting point for all this is to listen. Rebalancing a country’s economy is not a top-down, instructions from Whitehall operation. It is about paying attention to people so as to identify local opportunities, and then clearing any roadblocks that might check their ability to make the best of those opportunities.

It also means all politicians understanding that they are only politicians. They perform an important job, but they do not create any wealth themselves. Many of the new MPs previously had real jobs, so it may be easier for them to understand what holds people back. Grasping that is the first step on the way to a better-balanced economy, and a fairer and more prosperous one.