Post-Thatcherian England, as we all know, though, has successed.

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind

This article brought a number of different thoughts to mind, as did your thoughts. I think I'm going to put different ones in different comments.

Taking first your question:

European Tribune - Comments - Flying Island

Is there any hope on the political scene in England?

Simply, no.

1) What evidence is there to expect that after the credit crunch, the City of London will resume it's growth path in the new environment?

If it doesn't, how much money will be floating around for new arrivals from Sunderland to earn?

2. What evidence is there that Oxford (as a major research university) is generating income and jobs that could be soaked up by people from Sunderland? (Next to none.)

3. What evidence is there that Cambridge is generating income and jobs... (a bit more, but still sketchy.)

Those assumptions are made by lots of people, but they have never been more than hand-waving. They are not even coherent (as in self-consistent.)

Helen:

Where will these houses be built ? London and the South east is already in an accomodation crisis.

how will they move around when roads and railways are at saturation point ?

Where is the clean water coming from ? There is practically no spare capacity south of the Thames and next to bugger all north and east of london.

Move government to the north makes far more sense than cram more people in the south. But you won't hear that from the terminally idiotic sons of privilege.

keep to the Fen Causeway

http://www.policyexchange.org.uk/Publications.aspx?id=704

I've found this graph in that respect, but have not been able to find the diary/comments about it, nor the FT article yet... If anyone can do a better job than me...

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

It is a recurring sarcasm of Stephen Clarke that French would politicise everything (as the heroe keeps accusing his girlfriend Alexa of doing). Well, I think a major sarcasm of mine is about to develop in the refusal to see anything political in so many statements, uttered as law of nature, which actually are outrageously extreme and poisonous political ideas.

I don't think that, outside academic circles (in that description I guess I -sometimes- include places like ET), even words like supply and demand are ever used non-politically.

"The womb that spawned that thing is fertile yet"

1) The principles in play, of economic geography are ones I believe to be fairly sound, but the analysis so far is frighteningly superficial.

I'd particularly note at this point that that while some of the service jobs (design) related to Nissan in Sunderland did move off to London, others (Accounting etc.) moved off to Budapest. It's not at all clear that his assertion that the London job market can grow much more is anything more than an assertion.

2. Halfway through now and the big hole I'm seeing in the analysis is the leap to increasing the size of the London conurbation, not to mention the Cambridge one. Once you ask the questions that Helen asked (posted above) it is not at all clear how such a conclusion follows from the premises.

3. Ah, some of the questions start to surface:

costs. As
such, we can increase the optimal size of
London by making it easier for knowledge
spillovers to occur and by reducing congestion.
Both of these require improvements
in transport and that means investments in
public transport. In the last ten years the
number of people using the London
Underground has increased by 31 per cent,
far faster than the increase in the size of the
network.41 In short, not only has the supply
of transport failed to help London to
grow to its optimal size, it has failed even
to keep pace with the city's current needs.

4) The argument that planning decisions create a defacto subsidy for some kinds of industry to stay in London, rather than move out, does make some sense.

However, I remain wary of the notion that the service sector in London can/will grow to soak up all the jobs that (potentially) move away.

5. It's bizarre and ironic, but this report is in essence an argument about the value of infrastructure. But rather than asking questions about how our infrastructure is created, wrt to policy priorities, it rather suggests we should move people to where certain kinds of infrastructure already are.

6. There's good arguments about increasing autonomy of local government, particularly for investing in infrastructure.

7. Overall I agree with the notion that we may well be seeing a new wave of urbanisation into a number of ever bigger cities. And smaller cities will suffer if they are not "on the way to somewhere." But, I feel the argument that Sunderlanders should be moved to London, rather than looking to create a more prosperous region through increased co-operation with Newcastle seems very odd.

8. Section 13 purports to deal with the systemic failure that the proposed migrations would cause back in Sunderland. (See also parts of Eastern Germany.) Let's see what comes out of it.

b) That's it.

So the basic argument (which is interesting) is that we're going to see a new wave of urbanisation with migration to a smaller number of ever larger cities.

Existing smaller cities will wither and, like rural areas become sparsely populated and in need of greater economic subsidy.

The overall proposal is to go with the flow of this process. However, the detail is to bolster London, Oxford and Cambridge, rather than any other cities, which is rather odd, but ties back to the basic assumption on how "GVA" comes about. Which ties back to my questions in my other comment. Which perhaps deserve a diary, but I don't know if I have time.

What is the status of the ET Think Tank or am I just hallucinating?  Who's taking responsibility for this project?  

Let's start there.  A Dogpile search for progressive/liberal Think Tanks shows that the Good Guys are far behind in this area, not surprising since the Bad Guys have so much $$$$ to spend propagandizing their bullshit.

McCain/Palin ... total sacks of SHIT!

As for growing London... There are some practical limits to how big a city can be, and I think London is hitting them. One such limit is that it is pretty hard to achieve door to door average speeds above 20-30km/h with any kind of urban transport.

Overall, medium sized cities with 1 - 2 million population seem to be doing very well globally.

But development at the prime Vaux site in Sunderland has for years been held up by supermarket giant Tesco, which is sitting on the derelict property: http://www.sunderlandecho.com/business?articleid=3089885

The Vaux site formerly housed the local brewery, closed with the loss of 700 jobs in 1999 by the Swallow Hotel Group which sought to focus on its hotel business - such are the interventions of City institutions in Sunderland:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=917714
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/the_company_file/383766.stm

As regards the 1988 closure of the Sunderland shipyards:

'In the end the final closure of the yards on Wearside was sealed as part of a deal between the Department of Trade and Industry and the European Commission which agreed the closure as a trade off for the over-subsidisation of the privatization deals of yards elsewhere.' http://www.socresonline.org.uk/12/6/6.html

BBC RADIO 4 'File on Four' (6 Mar 1990) reported that government Minister Douglas Hogg then 'actively prevented private enterprise from re-opening the shipyard': http://www.radiolistings.co.uk/programmes/file_on_4.html
A 1991 Channel Four documentary "Tell Them In Gdansk" also reported on the deal that resulted in the closure of the Sunderland shipyards: http://seacoast.sunderland.ac.uk/%7Eas1sth/trevor.htm

And that's without even mentioning the mining industry. The decision-makers in London bear no small responsibility for this particular example of unequal development in the regions.

This photo of the Jarrow Marchers was undoubtedly his source:

When locusts move on, they leave nothing behind