The highest rates of employment growth are concentrated in the places that voted to leave the European Union, Localis said today (Wednesday) in response to labour market figures published in the Annual Population Survey. Of the twenty local authority districts estimated to be recording fastest growth in employment rates between October 2016 and September 2017, […]
In response to today’s publication of the Industrial Strategy White Paper, Localis chief executive, Liam Booth-Smith, said: “The decision to give England’s Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) primary control for strategic economic planning is a disappointing and sub-optimal option for driving national growth and productivity. “In March this year our paper ‘The Making of an Industrial […]
The impact of our broken voting system on our national politics is clear – the false majorities, voters abandoned in safe seats where representation hasn’t changed in generations, and the scourge of tactical voting where millions of people have to decide to vote with their head or their heart – to vote for who they […]
The United Kingdom has one critical flaw: there are too many English people. There are in fact five times as many English as the other three nations combined. This has always led to the perception of English dominance, and the practical risk that the English can outvote their partner nations. Over the years this problem […]
Let England assume its shape, wrote Orwell in 1941. In a fundamental shift in power the native genius of the people had to be freed; and the inefficiency, class privilege and the rule of the old dispelled. His point was democratic but more so of destiny. Only by the people taking charge could transformative freedom […]
It usually takes a terrorist attack for Britain to discuss seriously the role of religion in civil society. And when the conversation happens, it tends to flow into two channels. One is about what motivates Islamist violence: the role of mosques, the responsibility of the Muslim community, the sources of radicalisation, the effectiveness of security […]
There was a time when everything that mattered in political economy was happening in Manchester. All at once. In the early years of the 1840s, the Anti-Corn Law League, led out of the Free Trade Hall, Manchester by Richard Cobden and John Bright, was pressing the Prime Minister, Robert Peel of Bury, to lift tariffs […]
May 4th saw a quiet revolution in local government when voters in six metropolitan areas — Greater Manchester, Liverpool, Peterborough and Cambridge, Tees Valley, the West of England and the West Midlands — elected metro-mayors. A seventh metropolitan area — the Sheffield city region — will elect a mayor in 2018, and others may well […]
It is possible to avoid doing almost anything. But it is not possible to avoid being somewhere. When immersed in the most absorbing augmented or virtual reality simulator or simply with the benefit of a vivid imagination, you may project yourself elsewhere in space and time. But the truth is that you have to be […]
The country’s future national prosperity is imperilled because a toxic cocktail of threats – including Brexit, automation and a shrinking skills base – risks squeezing the supply of native workers trained to do tomorrow’s jobs – a report from Localis has today warned. In a paper published today entitled ‘In place of work – influencing […]