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The Ambiguous Ideology of Levelling Up
Author(s) -
Newman Jack
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
the political quarterly
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.373
H-Index - 37
eISSN - 1467-923X
pISSN - 0032-3179
DOI - 10.1111/1467-923x.13010
Subject(s) - levelling , ideology , slogan , politics , political economy , political science , brexit , coalition government , government (linguistics) , public administration , sociology , european union , law , economics , economic policy , linguistics , philosophy , cartography , geography
Abstract The Conservative Party's ‘levelling up agenda’ has been deployed both as a tool for public communication and as a broad motif for the government's policy programme, gaining a great deal of traction as a political message. Levelling up is a vision of a post‐Brexit Britain in which there will be greater state investment, educational opportunity, regional equality, and regional independence. However, this vision invokes a wide range of disparate political ideologies without addressing the underlying tensions between them. It speaks to social democrats about tackling deprivation; it speaks to social liberals about equality of opportunity; it speaks to economic liberals about supporting the free market; and it speaks to conservatives about reuniting the nation. If levelling up develops from a political slogan into a fully‐fledged policy programme, it will become increasingly difficult for the government to manage the ideological tensions inherent in the levelling‐up agenda.