Over the last decade the relationship between mainstream economics and serious spatial analysis – always sporadic – has become even more tenuous. What lies ahead for the British economy over the next ten years? Here, relentless centralisation of Westminster politics and Whitehall practice has been matched by a similar trend in much of the economics profession.
The result of this insensitivity to the geographically uneven development of the economy has been an entirely predictable political outcry from the disadvantaged regions. However, even the largely vacuous political responses, summarised in the ‘levelling-up’ slogan with the support of half-hearted initiatives like the Northern Powerhouse and Local Enterprise Partnerships, have not been matched by any serious analytical interest.

Over the last decade the relationship between mainstream economics and serious spatial analysis – always sporadic – has become even more tenuous. What lies ahead for the British economy over the next ten years? Here, relentless centralisation of Westminster politics and Whitehall practice has been matched by a similar trend in much of the economics profession.The result of this insensitivity to the geographically uneven development of the economy has been an entirely predictable political outcry from the disadvantaged regions. However, even the largely vacuous political responses, summarised in the ‘levelling-up’ slogan with the support of half-hearted initiatives like the Northern Powerhouse and Local Enterprise Partnerships, have not been matched by any serious analytical interest.

Over the last decade the relationship between mainstream economics and serious spatial analysis – always sporadic – has become even more tenuous. What lies ahead for the British economy over the next ten years? Here, relentless centralisation of Westminster politics and Whitehall practice has been matched by a similar trend in much of the economics profession.The result of this insensitivity to the geographically uneven development of the economy has been an entirely predictable political outcry from the disadvantaged regions. However, even the largely vacuous political responses, summarised in the ‘levelling-up’ slogan with the support of half-hearted initiatives like the Northern Powerhouse and Local Enterprise Partnerships, have not been matched by any serious analytical interest.