Rethinking “Left behind”

In recent years, there has been a welcome pivot towards real thinking about the causes and implications of the UK’s profound geographical inequalities. Indeed, one could readily argue that there this is a large degree of political consensus on the need to ‘level-up’ Britain, with both major political parties developing policy platforms that are predicated on addressing inequities in regional productivity and devolving power to ‘middle-tier’ Mayoral Combined Authorities. After decades of the major parties toying with the idea of devolution to England’s regions, real change is in the works. 

However, there is a more unwelcome and, dare I say, regressive consensus within this debate. It is not around the diagnosis of problems or the perception of policy solutions but concerns the semantic framing of the debate itself. Places at the sharp end of the UK’s regional inequalities are designated as ‘left behind’, a moniker that is pervasive across academia, the media and in political circles. Indeed, that the government’s Levelling Up White Paper mentions the phrase fifteen times, one of the most prominent academic texts on geographical inequalities is titled ‘Levelling Up Left Behind Places’ and there exists an All-Party Parliamentary Group on Left Behind Neighbourhoods, is demonstrative of the rhetorical hegemony of the term as a descriptor of the UK’s struggling towns and regions. A recent article surveying the etymology of the term indicates a post-2008 explosion in usage, as the effects of the financial crisis brought the plight of post-industrial and rural areas into sharp relief. In the UK and elsewhere, these areas have been the hinterland for support for the populist radical right, which has provided further impetus for academic research and political attention. 

There are undoubted advantages to having a shared vocabulary on certain issues; it provides a sense of conceptual cohesion for academics and policymakers and can heighten public awareness of policy debates. However, the convergence around the notion of ‘left behind’ places is both conceptually and politically problematic.

Whilst the phrase’s challenge to the urban bias in public policy is a welcome one, it is less clear what ‘left behind’ means in practice. Some use it as a rallying cry against central government austerity – for them ‘left behind’ places are those most affected by Conservative cuts in public services and benefits since 2010. For others, ‘left behind’ areas are those that have been locked-out of the process of globalisation, places that have experienced harsh de-industrialisation but have not been developed the knowledge-intensive business services that underpin the contemporary UK economy. It could also be interpreted as an indictment of government policy on devolution. Since 1997, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have experienced significant levels of political and economic devolution, that have proven popular with those who live there. It could be readily argued that England’s regions have been ‘left behind’ by this process and remain the premise of the dead hand of Westminster. Or perhaps it can be interpreted in cultural terms – are left behind places those whose social conservatism is no longer welcome in a national culture presided over by ‘liberal elites’?

All of the above meanings have some value and many places could readily fall into all four categories. However, like the government’s now-abandoned ‘levelling-up’ slogan, the phrase is so capacious that all manner of political meaning can be superimposed onto it. This may be why it has proven seductive to those across the political spectrum, as the term can be deployed to support various of political causes, to the extent that it is broadly meaningless in analytical terms. 

Secondly, and more importantly, the term carries problematic political connotations. It is fundamentally negative – it strips areas it has labelled of any form of political agency, suggesting that their fate is at the mercy of market forces, neglectful governments or lack of political power. Whilst it is true that people residing in such places often feel neglected by government policy, it is also true that no area or place voluntarily adopts the ‘left behind’ moniker. Indeed, many of the places that are traditionally considered in this category exhibit a robust sense of local pride and a sense of belonging. Moreover, the usage of the phrase ignores that many of the areas commonly referred to as ‘left behind’ have strong community cultures and have developed a remarkable level of resiliency in the face of savaged local council budgets. Far from languishing in their misfortunes, such areas have begun to develop community-driven social and economic platforms that other areas could learn from. 

The term also carries uncomfortable pejorative undertones and seems to fall into the canon of working-class labelling, in which those involved in opinion formation have designated Britain’s poor as ‘paupers’, ‘chavs’ or an ‘underclass’. The implication of the deployment of the ‘left behind’ leitmotif is that some places are further ‘forward’ than others, and it represents an uncritical and homogenising vision of ‘progress’ which ignores how areas of perceived social progress, particularly the nation’s capital, possess their own social and economic challenges. There is an element of ugly Victorian paternalism to such phraseology and it seems unlikely to inspire positive emotion amongst those who live in ‘left behind’ areas. If the regional policy turn is about empowering places of socio-economic disadvantage, then perhaps the first step is not to deploy language that is fundamentally disempowering.

However, perhaps the phrase has developed in a fit of absence of mind – there is no better alternative, hence why scholars often place it in quotation marks to demonstrate that they recognise all of the above but have no alternative vocabulary to accurately describe the state of play. Those of us involved in the debates surrounding regional inequalities must do better than this.

Should we look abroad for inspiration? Like us, France (‘peripheral France’), Netherlands (‘shrinking areas’) and Spain (‘the hollowed-out Spain’) deploy terms with pejorative flavouring, demonstrating the difficulty of addressing regional inequalities with language that is empowering for the areas in question. The US is hardly instrumental either – the ‘rust belt’ is undesirable due to its connotations of decaying metal and the fact that it refers to a geographically distinct part of the country, which does not apply in the UK. An older British conception, the ‘North-South divide’, is not particularly useful either – despite capturing the predominance of the South-East in the UK’s economy, it is far too crude and does not account for the complexity of geographical inequalities within the UK.  

The fact is, we already have the vocabulary to speak about geographic inequalities in the United Kingdom. If we wish to talk about areas of relatively low economic output, we have the data to do so with accuracy. The same is true of productivity, health inequalities, crime and all manner of other indicators of social progress. The Index of Multiple Deprivation already provides a mechanism for identifying and analysing areas that experience socio-economic challenges on multiple fronts and referring to such places using this language is decidedly less loaded than deploying ‘left behind’ rhetoric. It also opens the door for thinking about the areas in which ‘left behind’ places may outperform more affluent counterparts – we need only look at the oft-cited examples of Grimsby’s community-driven energy firm or Preston City Council’s approach to community wealth, as examples of so-called ‘left behind’ areas leading the way in socio-economic innovation. 

Abandoning the ‘left behind’ label does not mean ignoring the profound regional inequalities that exist in the UK. Doing so merely constitutes a recognition that the language we use in pursuing this goal matters and may send an important signal about how those who design public policy view large swathes of the country. We do not need the ‘left behind’ label to collectively address these issues – indeed, its ubiquity may be a symptom of the problems we face. 

Steph Coulter is a researcher at the Bennett Institute.