Boris Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda is genuine – but only because his own ambitions depend on its success

As far as Boris Johnson is concerned, Brexit is now done. There is also optimism that an extensive vaccination programme will soon lead us out of the Covid crisis. So the prime minister is free to begin his next big challenge, of “levelling up” Britain. It promises to be a bumpy ride.

Many politicians use lies as a cover for inaction. That is not the case with Johnson. He has received fair and sustained mockery for his promise to build a “world beating test and trace system”. But he has been mocked because he failed to do it, not because he didn’t try: £22bn of public money was spent on the failed project.  

Johnson likes to get things done. One of the many keys to understanding the Johnson method is in the deal he personally struck with West Ham United over the use of London’s Olympic Stadium. The difficulties were seemingly intractable. The Johnson solution was to put himself in sole charge, throw hundreds of millions of pounds of public money at the problem, make it appear solved, pose for the photo, take the plaudits and move on.

At the time, it was almost dazzling to watch: an actual politician ending the faffing about, sorting it out, getting it done. It was only years later that it would become clear everything about the deal was a complete mess. The stadium was terrible, the running costs exorbitant – a disaster from beginning to end.

There are clear warnings here. It is all too regularly pointed out, for example, that the “40 new hospitals” promised at the 2019 election are in fact only six, and that the “20,000 new police officers” merely replace those that have been removed since 2010, and that therefore the “levelling up” agenda is a fiction.  

This is not the case. Johnson’s attempts to “level up” Britain will be genuine. He is not driven by any great personal conviction beyond his own self-interest, and it will certainly be in his self-interest to keep hold of the huge numbers of low-income voters in the country’s more ordinary areas who voted for the Conservatives for the first time in decades.

In four and a half years, some of the consequences of Brexit will be real. The details of the deal unveiled this week show acceptable outcomes on goods, but not on services. It will not be good for middle class jobs. Already, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, has spoken of Brexit as “an opportunity for the financial services industry to do things differently”. The financial services industry is the best in the world. It doesn’t want an opportunity to “do things differently”.

By the time of the next election, the rebalancing of the country’s voting patterns may be even more dramatic. If Labour can lose Sedgefield, the Tories can certainly lose Beaconsfield. In other words, Johnson knows his promise to “level up” Britain has to be kept. It won’t all be talk. It will be action. But his track record on action does not inspire.  

He will face huge economic obstacles, but they will not be insurmountable. David Cameron’s ambitions to rebuild Britain did not extend much beyond replacing the state with a volunteering scheme – the so called Big Society – but the fallout of the 2008 crash meant even that was beyond him.

Johnson’s economic challenges from Covid are even bigger, and his coffers will also be shrunk by Brexit. Even Lord Frost, who negotiated the deal, has acknowledged that.

But he will not let it hold him back; that is not the Johnson way. The Attlee administration almost certainly changed the country more than any other, and it did so in the wake of the Second World War. It can be done.

If it is not done Johnson will pay the price, so he will certainly try. Whether he is able to achieve his ambitions, however, is the far harder question to answer.