-
The elephant in the room is that London is a global city, which in turn invites global competition. Whatever numbers you want to attach to it, a huge portion of UK GDP is created by London. That wealth exists by virtue of London being London.
There is lots that can be devolved or improved about the rest of the country, but it's impossible to remove the distortion of arguably one of the best cities in the world in a country this size without removing it.
FWIW I do think that investment outside of London and moving decision making would be a good idea to achieve some of what Oliver is trying to get at.
hugo7-
FWIW I do think that investment outside of London and moving decision making would be a good idea to achieve some of what Oliver is trying to get at.
I agree, and I do think that moving to a truly federal state, with equal say for Wales NI and Scotland would be the only way to save the Union - but that ship has sailed.
We have an electorate that will continue to vote for an authoritarian, nationalist party - who will continue to centralise power and will do precisely nothing to upset their core voter, who already owns their house and has done very well from the status quo.
If young people voted then this would change - but they don't, so it won't, and they'll continue to get what they're given as power continues to be retained by an increasingly geriatric block of society.
Moving the HoL to Hull, and massive investment in the regions that is controlled by the regions would be a desirable change, but what will happen instead is a whole bunch of Freeport's to move Southern businesses North, and more centralisation of power along with the standard Tory investment strategy of rewarding success and starving failure.
Dammit
Right, what Oliver is doing is looking at this problem:
This is an immediate problem with regards to housing - demand outstrips supply and this drives price increases.
An answer to this, leaving the existing economy as it is, would be to build more housing.
Olivers answer is to change, entirely, how the economy functions, which would then mean that people could find whatever job they wanted, anywhere in the UK that they wanted to live, and presumably some beneficent side-effect of the total economic change would relocate their family and friends to be near them through some currently undefined mechanism.
The problem here is that Olivers point is correct - if you totally change the system then the system is totally different, and therefore you can't argue with that.
However, and this is the kindest I can be here, Olivers plan to achieve this would see him ejected from the Dragons Den in 5% of the time that they would give to the Underpant Gnomes.
Advancing an impossible (without revolution) truism as the "fix" for housing scarcity and associated prices is literally a waste of the electrons that you have used to present it.
Entertainingly Rishi Sunak is going to try to make Olivers vision a reality using Freeports - these normally function (i.e. make a margin from) arbitrage of tariff rates, the oddity that the inputs of a product can have different tariffs from the outputs, and therefore if one converts one to the other before paying required duties then a profit can be made. The reality is that in the UK the published tariff schedules don't work for this, so you have to look at what else a Freeport allows - and that's regulation. For example, employment laws could be changed to reflect those of America, which would be extremely attractive to Amazon who could flex staff up and down with no reference to working hours, and also no reference to minimum wage, NI, pensions etc.
Plonk a Freeport in a deprived area and you can, using the taxation and regulation levers available, relocate (not generate, note) a business that is located elsewhere. This would attract jobs to an area (Amazon warehouses employ a lot of people at times of peak demand), and it would do it in a way that doesn't fall foul of EU rules on state-aid (to which the whole UK is subject via the Withdrawal Agreement, despite the current caterwauling over LPF requirements in the UK-EU FTA).
However, this is robbing Peter to pay Paul, and requires central management lest (say) Lancashire declares the entire county to be a Freeport.
TL:DR, Olivers argument is a truism that doesn't help, and until he can come back with something that is both practical and achievable we have to deal with the hand we have.