Levelling up is the way to beat Reform

It's hardly news that the Labour government lacks clear direction, a powerful overarching narrative and even an interest in ideas.

- Will Hutton

But maybe, just maybe, under the twin pressures of intense disaffection within the Labour party over its government's performance and the rise of Nigel Farage, it is stumbling towards some policies, and perhaps a wider framework, that might offer a coherence and purpose so far missing.

Last week's £5bn Pride In Place initiative, disbursing £500m a year to 339 disadvantaged neighbourhoods for the next 10 years and putting responsibility for spending money on local social revival firmly in the hands of community leaders, is important. Not only because it will prove popular, but the approach unleashing the bottom-up energy of local social entrepreneurs and community founders - potentially taps into a rich vein of social creativity.

It is to be emblematic of the prime minister's response to Reform, which is a fight, he says, for "the soul of the nation". The 311 seats that last week's Sky poll predicted Reform would win in a putative general election almost entirely included one of those 339 devastated neighbourhoods. But he should beware. Pride in Place, after all, was just one of 12 missions, together with accompanying metrics, that Boris Johnson's powerful levelling up white paper in March 2022 identified as the totality of actions required to turn around Britain's disastrous and poisonous geographical inequalities. Reform is not just a popular revolt against unchecked immigration: it is a revolt against neglect.