Britain | Levelling up

The British government’s “levelling up” plans are oddly old-fashioned

Targets, targets everywhere

INCREDIBLE AS IT may seem, there was a time when MPs did not talk incessantly about “levelling up”. According to Hansard, Parliament’s chronicler, the phrase was uttered in the House of Commons just 57 times between January 2010 and July 2019, when Boris Johnson became prime minister. The tally since then is 3,227. A rebranding last September gave Britain a Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. And on February 2nd the government explained how it would do it.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Spreading the jam”

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