England Lacks a Regional Policy to Counter London's Economic Dominance
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/peterhetherington. "A question for Burnham as he tours the country: how to reduce the magnetic pull of London? | Peter Hetherington | The Guardian." August 11, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
The author argues that London keeps sucking up investment, infrastructure spending, and tech growth while other parts of England are left behind, and that Andy Burnham's new devolution plans—though promising—won't fix this because Britain still has no overall national plan to spread prosperity more evenly. He calls for a revived national strategy and funding agency to address this imbalance before it's too late.
Conclusion
Andy Burnham's devolution agenda, while a step forward, is insufficient on its own to rebalance England's economy away from London's dominance, because the country lacks a genuine national planning framework or regional policy to ensure prosperity is spread throughout England.
Premises
- Government infrastructure spending decisions (like the £10bn-£11bn Lower Thames Crossing near London versus the scrapped A1 dualling in Northumberland despite fatal accidents) demonstrate a persistent bias toward sustaining London's growth over other regions.
- London is undergoing a third major economic reinvention as a global tech and AI capital, with the London-Oxford-Cambridge 'golden triangle' attracting nearly 70% of UK high-growth tech investment in 2023, intensifying its economic pull.
- England is the only UK nation without a strategy for national development, unlike Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, leaving no mechanism to prevent one city-region from dominating the national economy.
- Historical regional development agencies (RDAs), which successfully levered billions in private investment before 2010, were never designed to bridge the London/rest-of-England divide and were dismantled.
- Burnham's proposed devolution to mayoral authorities is a fundamentally different, place-based model than prior EU-aligned regional policy, and will take years beyond this parliament to produce material improvements for left-behind communities.
- The demand for energy, water, and housing driven by London's expansion (including over 200 datacentres) will increasingly strain resources and force national prioritization choices that currently have no strategic framework to guide them.
Assumptions
- Economic prosperity concentrated in one region (London) necessarily comes at the expense of other regions rather than benefiting the whole country through spillover effects.
- A national planning framework or regional policy is an effective and necessary tool for reducing regional inequality, as opposed to market-driven approaches.
- Devolution of tax powers and local decision-making to city-region mayors is inherently different from, and possibly less effective than, direct national regional policy and funding mechanisms.
- Past regional development agencies' successes (measured by leveraged private investment) are indicative of what a reformed national strategy could achieve.
- The political will and resources exist or could be marshaled for a 'reborn national agency' if only the right policy framework were established.