Ed Balls and Dan Turner www.thetimes.co.uk 

It is rare that Gordon Brown and George Osborne agree when it comes to economic policy. Students of 1990s politics might think the same of Tony Blair and John Major. But when all four former prime ministers and chancellors concede that widening regional inequality is a startling collective failure of British politics, it’s time for their successors to take note.

Despite all the promises of “levelling up”, Britain’s regions are further apart than ever. But we shouldn’t be surprised that the government hasn’t delivered: Britain has been failing at regional policy for more than 40 years. If anything we’ve gone backwards. The gap between southeast England and the rest of the UK is now wider than that between east and west Germany or northern and southern Italy — that’s not hyperbole but statistical fact.

What has gone wrong and what needs to change? To answer that we’ve interviewed 93 politicians and practitioners with six decades of experience. Cut through their differences over rail lines or elected mayors and there is broad agreement on the big picture: time and again, incoming administrations have announced a new regional policy and torn up what went before, only for the next set of leaders to switch approach again.

All this chop and change has been disastrous. New approaches on skills, transport or planning have never been given time to bed in before being uprooted. Alongside distrust of local government, inadequate infrastructure investment and a persistent bias in innovation spending towards the southeast, no wonder the UK has continued to grow apart.

The good news is that these two generations of past politicians are now urging the present one to learn from their mistakes. Regional inequality matters more for politics than it has for a century. We have a new cadre of mayors and devolved administrations giving central government the confidence it needs to let go. With sustained backing from No 10 and the Treasury, change is possible.

What we need is a cross-party plan that our leaders can stick to. It won’t be easy. There will be tough debates about how we pay for it, and how we prevent new inequalities opening up between towns and cities, or city-regions and the countryside.

But our unprecedented set of candid interviews should be a wake-up call for Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer. We have an opportunity to build a lasting consensus that can weather political change and make our economy grow faster and more fairly across all regions. Are our leaders brave and far-sighted enough to seize it?

Ed Balls is a former cabinet minister; Dan Turner is policy adviser to the South Yorkshire mayor. All 93 interviews, plus summary, can be found at sites.harvard.edu/uk-regional-growth/