LONDON — Britain’s left-behind voters are flocking to populist Nigel Farage. Labour’s Rachel Reeves is hoping she can buy them back.
The U.K.’s chief finance minister will Wednesday attempt to convince voters living in towns and cities outside Britain’s prosperous capital she has their backs, as she publishes a spending blueprint which will define the first term of Britain’s center-left government.
Reeves has already announced billions of pounds of investment in public transport in the north of England and the Midlands in the run-up to Wednesday’s spending review, along with a cash injection into the science and technology industry.
She will also set out investment in security, health and the economy — although unprotected areas such as the Home Office, Ministry of Justice and local councils were bracing for difficult decisions.
“This government is renewing Britain. But I know too many people in too many parts of the country are yet to feel it,” Reeves will tell MPs Wednesday.
“This government’s task — my task — and the purpose of this spending review — is to change that. To ensure that renewal is felt in people’s everyday lives, their jobs, their communities,” she will add.
Farage’s Reform UK has been surging ahead in the polls as voters protest declining living standards, amid stark regional inequalities in the U.K.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer has identified the upstart party as his major electoral rival, despite it having just five MPs.
But while Labour MPs eyeing Reform competitors will welcome a renewed focus on regional growth, Reeves risks a row with Britain’s high-profile London Mayor Sadiq Khan.
In the red
Red Wall MPs have been primed.
In the run-up to Wednesday, MPs in constituencies with increasingly fickle voters in the Midlands and the north of England — who historically supported the Labour Party but went Conservative in 2019 under Boris Johnson, and are now flirting with Reform UK — have been reassured they will see cash diverted into their areas, with investment in skills and jobs.
They are expecting the Treasury to fund an independent commission on neighborhoods to identify just over 600 of the most-deprived areas, which one MP thinks will become a focus of spending. “Most of those are across the Red Wall,” the MP said.
“We’ve had the painful early decisions and now we start needing to make a positive case,” the MP added, branding it “No. 11’s way of reviving leveling up, but based on actual need rather than areas bidding for cash.”
What about the losers?
Reeves’ rhetoric will quickly be put to the test when the full spending review documents are published, and the detail of exactly where the ax will fall emerges.
Expectations that cash will be diverted away from Britain’s capital risk angering the powerful Khan.
Figures close to the capital’s mayor were furious at plans to cut London’s allocation from the U.K. Shared Prosperity Fund to zero in future years. The fund was established to support the long-term economic development of towns and cities in place of EU structural funds after Brexit.
“If the Treasury goes ahead with this cut, it would be incredibly shortsighted. They say they want economic growth but their actions in failing to invest in new infrastructure in the capital and cutting local growth funds will actually damage our economy, not improve it … they say they want regional mayors to be the drivers of growth but then remove their levers to achieve growth,” an individual close to Khan told POLITICO’s Playbook.
A government official pointed out that in London alone, the Treasury has backed the extension of four airports, alongside funding HS2 to Euston and approval of City Hall plans to pedestrianize Oxford Street.
Leveling up 2.0
Weary voters may think they have heard it all before.
Former Conservative Chancellor George Osborne championed the Northern Powerhouse as he sought to detoxify his party’s brand in the north of England. Ex-Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s flagship leveling-up agenda also sought to convince traditional Labour voters, who voted Conservative for the first time in 2019 following the Brexit vote, to stick around.
That vote collapsed for the Tories. Labour’s new Housing Secretary Angela Rayner later ditched the “leveling up” title from her government department, declaring there would be “no more government by gimmick.”
Luke Tryl, executive director of the research company More in Common, who regularly conducts focus groups, said he had not understood why Labour pivoted away from leveling up.
“It was always the right diagnosis the fact that the social contract was letting too many people in specific parts of the U.K. down, and that is what drives Reform,” he said.
“Regions like the North have the potential to drive national growth and prosperity — we aren’t short of investable projects,” Rosie Lockwood, head of advocacy at the IPPR North think tank, said. “But we’ve been subject to empty rhetoric for far too long,” she added.
Tryl agrees it is crucial Reeves makes good on her promises.
“There is no doubt that raising expectations then letting them down contributed to making trust even worse,” he said.
Andrew McDonald contributed reporting
Leveling up 2.0: Rachel Reeves makes her pitch to Britain’s left-behind voters
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