RISHI AND THE REST OF THE CONSERVATIVES SHOULD TAKE A BOW!! Progress towards a series of levelling up goals set by the UK government has been “glacial”, and achieving them by the target date of 2030 will require a big increase in resources for struggling areas, a leading thinktank has said. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said that, on many measures, regional inequality had widened and the UK had gone into reverse. In 2022, the government set out a white paper containing 12 goals aimed at “levelling up” the UK. While praising the clarity and ambition of the plan, the thinktank said the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis had combined to make the period since the last election, in 2019, a challenging time to make good on the Conservative party’s pledge to narrow the UK’s geographic divisions.
