Nothing will help us now we have left

I continue to maintain my respect and admiration for P Toynbee in the Grud --and simultaneously to worry about the bitter conceptual block eating away at her over Brexit. Today's piece is an example. Here is the gist:

Boris Johnson’s mighty pledge to narrow the gap between the richest and poorest regions in the UK is the policy with everything – except the monumental sums to make it happen....Local government is drained of funds, and the places worst hit are the very same now promised investment...regional inequality of income is at 1901 levels [relatively, of course]  Other European countries face similar regional problems, but ours are worse.  [oh dear -- looks a bit ominous]

Germany is the stand-out success.  ..."They spent 10 times more than the [British] government is proposing, on research and development, gold-plated universities and business support,” says Tom Forth, head of data at ODI Leeds, a specialist in regional policy. Germany did it by using cities as hubs: he points to those cities needing fast train, tram and bus services to local towns....Rhetoric and promises are already running dangerously far ahead of any “levelling up” that people will ever actually see.

This was to help absorb the East, of course, a very well-supported project, but even so -- it's a useful comparison. But then an odd bit where her pet obsession returns in a strangely incoherent way:

Of course, one easy way to narrow the north-south divide beckons. The south’s wealth relies on the glittering gold of financial services. Brexit plans risk dealing it a hefty blow, sacrificing bankers (unpopular, but a huge chunk of our economy), for fishermen (popular, but negligible economically).

So amid the convolution, Brexit plans will not permit the north-south divide to deepen as it did before (under the EU). Surely that's good then? No --

The City sent up distress flares after Johnson’s Brexit speech on Monday, reminding him finance is “critically important”. Without it, expect empty Treasury coffers for all this levelling up. Levelling down may be what we get.

So remedying regional inequality by tackling the concentration of wealth in the South will not work, because overall, revenues will fall (or so the City has threatened). This reanimates the old Tory stuff about 'levelling down' -- is she subscribing to that after all these years? Given the apparently iron laws of capitalism, just as neolibs have always said, no non-market policy to eliminate regional inequalities can ever work, as the Southern Europeans had to learn.

How on earth did Germany manage to raise the revenue to spend in the East? 10 times more than Johnson is proposing!

Nothing will work except markets (and international neolib manifestations of them of course). If only we had stayed in (and just got used to deepening regional inequalities?). 

What makes her argument coherent is just the one focal concern  -- it is anti-Brexit and anti-Johnson (mostly for doing Brexit). Any anti Brexit arguments will do -- social democratic, neolib, all are in the mix. Only failure and deepening inequality await until we rejoin.