What is it about the top right section of England that leads to article after article appearing in Unherd where individuals are asked their opinion, like the cheap MSM way of doing “news” these days, whilst hand-wringing for Britain on their sense of loss and ennui?

In the past few months, we’ve had Newcastle, Durham and now Teesside trashed, and for good measure a bit further south, Boston.

Many areas in this part of the country are thriving and their inhabitants cheerful and optimistic. Others aren’t, and their inhabitants a bit despondent and pessimistic; rather like everywhere else then. Would it kill journalists and writers to at least try to provide some balance?

Freeports connected to a good national road/rail network (and roads are the more important part) can work well, but governments insist on tying the Green albatross around their necks, so they are doomed from the start.

Some rando on the street purportedly calls his hapless mayor a “pound shop Trump” who has “delivered no jobs”. Yeeeeeeah. What would some guy in Northern England know about President Trump’s record on employment (which was at all-time highs, particularly for blacks and Hispanics)? I suspect the writer shoehorned in that little comment because one can’t engage in journalism without the requisite Trump dig. But, if the guy actually did say it, his ignorance can be blamed on the journalists required to produce Trump digs.

£500 million to develop the largest brownfield site in Europe sounds like a bargain compared to HS2.
And what we need is Enterprise Zones, not freeports. A freeport can be a small part of an Enterprise Zone, but an enterprise zone will never be part of a freeport.

As Ronald Reagan used to say, “The most frightening words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.'”
Boris quite fancied himself as a messiah-figure, didn’t he? Full of bonhomie and vague promises, he left it to someone else to do the thinking and the organising to make good the promises.
Does anyone remember Heseltine on Merseyside? Heseltine made promises, but he put in the graft to make it happen – and that included knocking local heads together, to make them work as a team. Did it work? Up to a point. Liverpool is hardly a shining beacon of prosperity, but it’s not a basket-case either.
Are there any examples, anywhere in the world, of successful regeneration of a city or a region?

Freeports have been around, in one form or another, for years. The UK had them when we were in the EU, as recently as 2012, but the issue with them is there is no real evidence that they do any more than displace investment from one area to another, rather than encourage wider growth.

With this particular example, Private Eye has run a whole series of articles pointing out the crony capitalism element of it; enriching a few well connected people at public expense. A scam on the taxpayer.

The wider issue, though, is the model, the idea of ‘leave it to the market’ and a thousand flowers will bloom. The 2008 crash should have disabused us of this, but apparently not.

The state of our seas and rivers, where holidaymakers are noticing that they would be swimming in their own waste if they want to bathe has brought put the water companies under the spotlight, but also the question of whether privatisation delivered the better, cheaper service that was promised. With water, the involvement of private equity and foreign ownership has meant that billions of pounds has left the country in dividends, debt has been loaded on some companies while investment in infrastructure has suffered.

With the major economic powerhouses, US, EU, China, starting programmes of heavy investment, and changing the rules on state aid, the UK risks being left behind if we don’t at the very least question whether continuing with this economic model is the way to a better future.

Dreadful attempt at a hatchet job from an obviously biased ‘writer’. Houchen still commands huge support from swathes of Teessiders, which is why Labour drones are doing all they can to discredit him.

Levelling up was meaningless. All that could be done was to take money from the successful part of the economy and give to the weakest. End result would be more decline as the successful see their efforts being taken away and stop bothering..

The mistake that people make is thinking the government actually cares and will follow through to make the project a success. Strong local mayors who are accountable to local voters and have control of their own revenue stream have to assume responsibility. Unfortunately, democratic structures in Britain offer no help as they often hinder, rather than help this process. Until this democratic deficit is corrected very little will improve.
The UK government could help with road and rail infrastructure investments but doesn’t; instead sinking huge sums into the essentially useless HS2 project.

I would so love the ghastly lower middle class Tory MPs to endure a pub outing in this part of England where so many great, tough, noble Coldstream Guardsmen whom I was so priveliged to know, come from and face them after a few pints……and just wait for the ambulances to turn up and port the politicians to the nearest casualty department… actually no, that is unfair…. to the furthest possible casualty department.