An Underpowered Northern Powerhouse: Infrastructure in the Ungovernable North¹

Abstract

The author sets out the development of the Northern Powerhouse initiative since it was launched by George Osborne in 2014. The chapter reflects on where the policy initiative and programmes are now in 2019 as we await Brexit. The new Conservative Boris Johnson premiership in 2019 has backed Northern Powerhouse Rail between Leeds and Manchester, and in advance of the major UK Spending Review after Brexit and the smaller towns have been promised investment funds. This chapter presents the wicked issues involved in seeking to address the North–South divide and re-balancing the UK at a time of increasing and deepening social and economic inequalities. The chapter calls for the strengthening of the Northern Powerhouse initiative due to its phenomenal brand. This requires greater collaboration between the public, private and voluntary sectors across the North of England to address the key strategic policy issues and yet there is no one organisation driving the Northern Powerhouse initiative. The author argues the Powerhouse may well be both underpowered and ungovernable and that Politicians and what she calls the Policy Qualgecrats, need more compelling Imagineers of the North, if we are to benefit and make more sense of this new pan-regional scale of governance and turn it into a real force for rebalancing the North as a whole.

Citation

Headlam, N. (2019), "An Underpowered Northern Powerhouse: Infrastructure in the Ungovernable North¹", Liddle, J. and Shutt, J. (Ed.) The North East After Brexit: Impact and Policy (Brexit Studies Series), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1108/978-1-83909-009-720191001