If Sir Keir’s aides have a moment, they are invited to run their eyes over the below.
Why do our most extreme opponents – Britain’s enemies within, often funded from abroad, who pose as patriots but peddle lies, incite violence and stir up hate – so often denigrate their own capital city?
Our capital city – London.
Why do they falsely claim that it is “fallen” or “lost” when, in so many ways, and despite Brexit, the pandemic and the sidelining it suffered under the Conservatives, it is still growing and thriving?
They do it because they cannot bear to recognise that London, with its energy, creativity and vast human variety, represents one of things – one of the very many, very different things – our country can be proud of.
London, let us remember, is the mighty engine room of our country’s economy. Almost a quarter of all UK economic output comes from it. Every year, tens of billions of pounds in taxes raised in London are spent in other parts of the country – north and south, east and west – on public services and on funding infrastructure.
I would like to see less of that dependency on London. I want all of our other great cities to become more successful, more independent, more attractive to business, more able to provide great opportunities for their people and draw others from around the country and the world.
But we cannot achieve that if London is made weaker – precisely because the stronger London and its economy is, the better able the government – this Labour government – is to fund the skills training and new transport and revived industrial power that Birmingham and Leeds and Cardiff and Manchester and Bristol and Glasgow and Liverpool and many other cities need.
My friend Sadiq Khan is right when he insists that when London does well, the whole country does well. And just because Boris Johnson used to say the same thing, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
To help London grow stronger – and grow better – and to help our other cities and regions at the same time, we are now finalising plans, worked out with Sadiq, to give away more powers to London’s City Hall so that London can take care of its own affairs better – and, as a result, do more for the rest of the country too.
We will build further on the historic devolution of power to the capital made by the last Labour government at the start of this century to put London and Londoners more in charge of their own destiny, and become even more of an asset to our country than they already are.
Those powers will include more freedom for London government to raise more taxes at London level and spend those taxes the way its Mayor and its local councils, rather than Whitehall and the Treasury, thinks best.
That won’t mean the rest of the country gets less. Quite the opposite – by giving London more freedom and control over taxes raised in London, London will generate more for us all.
Conference, we must not fall into the trap of blaming one part of our country for the problems of others. It is true that some parts of Britain have, for many decades – indeed, for centuries – been wealthier than others.
But even the wealthiest have also contained stubbornly high rates of poverty and disadvantage. My job as Prime Minister and leader of a Labour government is to recognise that truth and to work relentlessly with every part of England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, to create opportunity, spread wealth and bring those rates of poverty down.
We will never do that by pretending that favouring some parts of the UK at the expense of others will end inequality. In the Britain I want to build, no one would be left behind, whether they live in Aberdeen or Anglesey, Blackpool or Birmingham, Carlisle or Camden, where my constituency is.
The dead end, regional politics of the so-called “north-south divide” are not progressive, not patriotic and not prepared to deal with reality. They are though, as their name suggests, divisive.
The different regions and nations of our United Kingdom have long had precious and profitable relationships with each other. We need to strengthen those good relationships, so that all concerned get more out of them, not encourage destructive resentments and rivalries.
We need all of our cities to grow stronger economically, and build stronger relationships – with other cites, including cities overseas, and, of course, with the towns and villages that surround them, so that as prosperity increases, it is also shared.
Conference, our country does not need any more voices of grievance and division, seeking to blame honest, hard-working migrants or supposed “metropolitan elites” – who include, I am told, north London lawyers – for difficulties whose true roots and causes could not be more different.
Instead, the regions and nations – the cities and towns and villages – of the United Kingdom need unity – unity in their dazzling diversity – to work together for national renewal.
All reasonable suggestions for re-writes considered, but don’t push your luck. Follow Dave Hill on Bluesky.
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