The 'Stronger Towns Fund' implies a weaker Prime Minister
Dan Kitwood-WPA Pool/Getty Images
In the United States they call it “pork-barrel”. Here, the Prime Minister calls it her “Stronger Towns Fund”. She plans to spend £1.6 billion over four years across the country, with the lion’s share going to Leave-voting regions that elected mainly Labour MPs, such as the North West, West Midlands and Yorkshire.
The actual purpose of this old-fashioned “regional policy” is rather vague. We are assured that it will create jobs, fund training and boost economic activity. Theresa May claims that her largesse will address the seemingly undeniable fact that “prosperity has been unfairly spread”.
Past experience suggests that any benefits for these communities from such state-funded regeneration schemes will be even more unfairly spread. Much of the money usually sticks to the fingers of those who dole it out and those who know how to exploit the system. The Stronger Towns Fund will be distributed by Local Enterprise Partnerships, a legacy of the Coalition that was inspired by Lord Heseltine. For those who believe in free market capitalism, including many Conservative politicians, corporatist initiatives of this kind are anathema.
A good example of how such an initiative can go wrong was the Help to Buy housing scandal, when it emerged that one firm, Persimmon Homes, had made over a billion last year on the back of a scheme intended to help young first-time home buyers, with the former CEO pocketing a bonus of £75 million. After he departed under a cloud, he was replaced by the company’s finance chief — who had only profited to the tune of £34 million. To add to the scandal, a whistleblower has warned that many of the homes built to capitalise on Help to Buy are substandard.
It is possible, even if unlikely, that the Stronger Towns Fund will avoid such pitfalls. Even if it were to do so, however, the accusation that this is bribery would still be hard to deny. Mrs May needs Labour votes in the Commons to get her deal through. Coincidentally, most of the fund just announced will go to the constituencies that elected Labour MPs who are most likely to defy their own party and vote with the Government. No wonder the Prime Minister’s motives are being scrutinised and her self-justification taken with a barrel of salt pork. (The origin of the phrase “pork-barrel” in antebellum America was the practice of rewarding slaves with salted meat; after the Civil War it acquired its modern connotation of bribery.)
Downing Street hopes that up to thirty Labour MPs will vote for the Withdrawal Agreement, cancelling out those Tory Brexiteers who cannot stomach the Irish backstop. The European Research Group (ERG) has presented the Prime Minister with a set of three conditions that must be met if they are to support a reworked version of her deal. The three tests are tough, going beyond “reinterpreting the temporary nature” of the backstop, which is all that has so far been offered. It is unlikely that the EU will budge sufficiently to bridge the gap between the text as it stands and the reassurances sought by the ERG. Many of the latter will follow the lead set by their leader, Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had seemed to be softening his line, but he will take his stand on the three tests.
It seems probable, therefore, that Mrs May will only be able to steer her version of Brexit through the Commons with the help of Labour MPs. Hence the new regional policy, which may prove to be too little, too late. Stronger Towns implies a weaker Prime Minister. And post-Brexit Britain cannot be built on the politics of pork and porkies.
