Regional inequality and the UK Government’s approach to Brexit

My article in tomorrow’s Cornish Guardian looks at issues around regional inequality and the UK Government’s approach to Brexit. It will be as follows:

The UK Government has issued a statement confirming it will honour the current programme of structural funding for the next two years. The official Treasury press release states that “businesses, universities and local organisations” will have the assurance “that any funding they secure through EU programmes, from now until the end of 2020, will be guaranteed – even in a no-deal scenario.”

Such a commitment is to be welcomed, but Theresa May and her Government need to go much further to develop a meaningful regional investment programme.

This is especially important for areas such as Cornwall and West Wales & the Valleys, which have been receiving the highest levels of funding of EU funding to combat low levels of economic performance, to create jobs and help people into work and training.

It has been announced that there will be a post-Brexit “UK Shared Prosperity Fund,” but ministers have had little to say about how it might work and whether the needs of poorer areas like Cornwall will be prioritised.

In Wales, Plaid Cymru has actively been challenging Conservative politicians to live up to the promises of “Vote Leave” on regional funding.

The Prime Minister was at an important agricultural show in Wales last week when MP Jonathan Edwards pointed out that "in the run-up to the EU referendum we were promised that rural Wales would not be a penny worse off after Brexit." He and various media outlets sought assurance to that effect, but it was not forthcoming. Not unsurprisingly, there has been quite a backlash.

Jonathan Edwards has rightly pointed out that “instead of getting our fair share of the cake, we may end up with no more than crumbs” from the Westminster table.”

Even senior journalists hit out at the noises coming from Westminster, with one adding that the “British state has never been good at distributing resources fairly around the nations and regions of the UK … infrastructure investment has gone disproportionately to London.”

While the political debates in Cornwall and Wales and elsewhere have been ongoing, another report has been published about the stark regional inequalities across the United Kingdom. This latest report has come from Sheffield Hallam University and its starkness had been well summarized by a prominent columnist

“All countries have their regional differences. States in the American Deep South are poorer than those in New England. But Britain is in a class of its own. The gap between the richest and poorest parts is wider than in any EU country. Incomes per head in inner London are five times as high as in the Welsh valleys or Cornwall.”