The empty rhetoric on levelling up leaves an open goal for Labour.

If Labour proposes to do things the Tories are too scared to do, then they have a narrow and perilous path to Downing Street. It’s their best options.

A recent study by a thinktank indicates post-coronavirus the government’s task of “levelling up” Britain will be four times harder than it would have been initially. This leaves an open door for Labour to do and say the things the Tories could never do and say.

People don’t want a return to business as usual after the pandemic, and the government recognises it. It is proposing surface level reforms and changes, things that may bring benefit to the communities they won over in 2019. However, after the greatest economic contraction since the 1700s, and a global pandemic, that won’t be enough.

In order to truly “level up” the British economy, the Conservative government would have to expand the state yet further, and seize control of the economic agenda in a way no free marketeer ever would, steering and driving investment and development right across the UK with an industrial strategy and new, 21st century public services. The Tories will pay lip service to this, but because of the interests they were founded to represent, they’ll never go all the way.

Labour must go all the way, and it must start laying the groundwork for that now. Labour’s path to ousting this government at the next election hinges on showing up their promises for just that, empty promises with not nearly enough radical action. It hinges on making a case grounded in people’s everyday lives, of a transformative new deal for the United Kingdom. It doesn’t hinge on caution and piecemeal doublespeak; that’s how the Tories out dazzle, and win yet again.