A new capital city?

Last week I appeared on BBC 5 Live’s Victoria Derbyshire show to discuss a theoretical northern capital. This is of course in an alternative universe, and it was decided to consider how this could work if we moved the capital to Haltwhistle, which happens to be the geographical centre of Great Britain.

The show was great fun, Terry Christian also appeared as the ‘northern’ voice and was especially good value. I was there to discuss the logistics behind the idea. While we obviously aren’t advocating moving England’s capital city it was very interesting how much ‘blue sky’ thinking can actually translate into real policies and ideas.

What we can say is that the UK is an over-centralised nation.  For example in the USA, broadly speaking, functions are spread around the country – government (Washington), finance (NY) and high-tech (LA).  While in the 1980’s the Italian Stock Exchange was moved from Rome to Milan. The city has changed markedly from being viewed as an industrial centre to now making its mark as a cultural and fashion centre internationally.

In the UK, overheating in the South impacts on quality of life issues, notably in London. Boosting the economic performance of less prosperous regions in the UK would make it easier for the South East to cope with the problems that current levels of relative economic prosperity pose such as congestion and affordable housing.

ippr north will shortly be publishing A Northern Economic Agenda which will set out how best to revive the economies of the North. One of our key recommendations will be that more high-end jobs in the public sector should be relocated to the North. While over 7,000 of these have been moved already, most of these jobs have been low and medium qualified positions. We would argue that while the North of England has a strong heritage of heavy industry and an abundance of contact centres, there is currently a deficit in high-skilled jobs, which also means the region’s existing academic potential is not being tapped.

So although moving the capital to Haltwhistle may be a pipedream, a rebalancing of policies to ensure sustainable growth benefits all our regions should not be.