If a Labour government is to stand for anything, then governing “for everyone” should begin with those communities that have been systematically marginalised by economic change and public policy alike. Addressing the entrenched inequality of opportunity faced by places long excluded from opportunity should shape how we exercise state power to rebuild life chances and secure a fair economy for all.
This is not a new cause. It has featured in public policy for more than two decades and was taken up, however imperfectly, by the Conservative government after 2019 under the banner of 'Levelling Up'. That agenda ultimately failed, undermined by weak delivery and strategic incoherence. A scathing report by the Public Accounts Committee revealed that only a fraction of funds had been spent, with little evidence of convincing or compelling impact. But the underlying diagnosis was clearly right and it’s a cause that has been taken up by the current Government.
On this question, Labour supporters have much to welcome in the Government’s agenda. Analysis suggests that the Starmer Government is already outspending the Johnson administration’s Levelling Up programme, and that, on current trends, investment in the North East will be seven times higher than under Johnson. Perhaps most notably, the Pride in Place programme has committed £5bn of investment for nearly 250 communities across the UK and deserves credit for empowering local partnerships to shape regeneration, moving away from the centrally imposed priorities that characterised Levelling Up funding.
Yet for all this progress, there remains a core flaw in the Government’s strategy, and one that risks limiting the impact of even the most generous programmes. Much of what has been announced is still best understood as regional development rather than regional balance. These initiatives redistribute money toward poorer places but they don’t yet redistribute power, nor systematically reshape how national policy is designed. They influence the conditions for long-term growth, but do little to embed the interests of left-behind communities across the whole of government.
We may rebuild a train station but we aren’t rewiring infrastructure policy. We might invest in a community centre but we lack any national, government-backed project to rebuild social cohesion across the country. Too often 'place' remains an afterthought - something addressed through piecemeal funding streams rather than treated as the core lens through which all policy is designed.
That’s the crucial distinction between regional development and regional balance. Development is about investing in places, while balance is about changing the system so opportunity is more evenly distributed between them. Without a focus on balance, even well-intentioned spending risks becoming a series of disconnected projects rather than a coherent national mission.
The hard truth is that this is one area where the previous government’s approach contained a lesson worth learning. The funding mechanisms of levelling up were frequently derided and often rightly so. But the Levelling Up and Regeneration Act also introduced something more ambitious: a set of statutory “missions” that were intended to hardwire spatial considerations for reducing geographic disparities and to report annually to Parliament on progress. Public bodies were also expected to adopt an explicit duty to consider how their policies affected regional outcomes.
In other words, while the money was often misdirected, the architecture recognised an important truth that closing regional gaps requires more than grants but embedding fairness between places into the machinery of government itself.
Labour now faces a choice. It can continue to rely primarily on funding programmes, or it can adopt a place-based, mission-oriented approach to rebalancing the country. The Labour movement could ask a fundamental question on whether we should introduce a statutory framework that commits the Government to narrow the regional inequalities in opportunity.
If we continue simply to funnel money into individual projects, it is hard to guarantee either lasting impact or public recognition of Labour’s role in delivering that change. What is needed is a clear national mission to end the postcode lottery of opportunity, led by the centre of government, and articulated by its leadership. Labour should consider legislating for place-based missions, and a statutory commitment to reducing geographic disparities, backed by annual reporting and measurable benchmarks.
In parallel, Labour should go much further on fiscal devolution. Recent decisions, such as granting tourism levy powers, are welcome, but they fall far short of the scale of change required. The English Devolution and Community Empowerment Bill, for all its ambition, largely sidesteps the central issue of fiscal power. Yet without devolving meaningful fiscal firepower, claims that the government is “rewiring” the state remain hollow.
That doesn’t imply devolving everything overnight - but it does demand a clear direction of travel. A commission on fiscal devolution could assess which taxes are suitable for decentralisation over the long-term and set out a roadmap for change. Importantly, any expansion of fiscal autonomy could be accompanied by a robust system of equalisation in law, ensuring that poorer regions are not left behind. Such a statutory framework could serve the dual purpose of advancing fiscal decentralisation, while tackling the regional inequalities through the approach outlined above.
The current government is often accused of lacking a single lodestar in government. Yet the mission of rebalancing the economy in the interests of every community, could prove exactly that. Rewiring the state cannot simply mean spending more, but governing differently - embedding regional equity into law and policymaking.
If Labour is serious about building a fairer economy that works for everyone, regional balance must become a guiding mission - one capable not only of directing investment, but of reshaping the state so that opportunity is no longer determined by postcode.
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Jason Bunting is currently Advocacy Manager at the Fairness Foundation, a think tank focused on building a fairer economy. He previously served as a Parliamentary Assistant in the Northern Ireland Assembly. Jason holds a Master's degree in Public Policy from the University of Oxford and an undergraduate degree in French and Politics from Queen's University Belfast. He is writing in a personal capacity.
All blog posts represent the views of the author alone and not necessarily those of Mainstream.
