Extra maths this week – if you take away £15 billion and then put back £4 billion, are you up or down? If you put something that you should be doing anyway into a pot called ‘Levelling Up’, have you made any progress? If you maintain an iron grip at the centre on all the decision-making associated with levelling up, haven’t you just entirely missed the point?

Meanwhile, as a nation we are falling behind in crucial areas, especially in industrial investment, especially in the regions that are furthest behind, including the South-West.
The truth is that for three years this Government has had its eyes off the ball, Covid-19 notwithstanding. It has been distracted by its leadership issues and knocked off course by Brexit realities and other self-inflicted economic wounds.
Worse, though, it is being led by a much-monied few. Oligarchs, if you like. Not only do they not seem to understand what gives at street level but they seek to sustain the environment in which they rose to the top including, it seems, an interactive role for donors and other influencers.

If you want levelling-up, fairness, equality of opportunity. If you want non-partisan professional people on the job, then a fit-for-purpose modern electoral system is an essential condition, a sine qua non – sorry, the Latin translation is for Boris.
It is only by working together across the nation that we can get the elitism, the Home Counties focus out of government.
You will not get that by see-sawing from blue to red, red to blue every few years. Nor do you get it by backing one lot for more than a decade. As we are seeing now, that gives rise to a preoccupation with careers, with prospects for re-election rather than a focus on what needs to be done and how best to do it.

Lib Dems know that the way ahead is about innovative policies that improve fairness and inclusiveness – opportunity for all – across society. We need to be rid of the dead hand of left and right dogmas that prevent practical and necessary change, and which perpetuate many of our deep-seated, structural socio-economic problems.
Politics should be about looking ahead, not hankering for a bygone era or failed ideology, about stopping doing what doesn’t work and doubling down on what does work.
It might mean radical change, even upheaval to get us back on track. It does mean there must be effective, trustworthy communication between government and the governed. It does mean creating the conditions for productive, investment-intensive interaction with industry and commerce on a strategic, purposeful agenda – driving positive change, looking ahead and divesting ourselves of the clutter and baggage of the past.