For the past 30 years the principal aim of government economic policy has been, arguably, to protect London’s position, particularly as a financial center, while leaving the rest of the country largely ignored. In the U.K. version of trickle-down economics, London is the golden goose whose droppings fertilize the rest of the country. In reality there was not much trickle and the U.K., like the U.S., is becoming a more unequal society.
There is a spatial dimension to this social inequality. The U.K. has the most marked regional inequality in Europe. The rich and wealthy are concentrated in London and the South East where household incomes are higher than the rest of the country. As the U.K. became a more unequal and divided society, the cleavage between London and the South East compared to the rest of the country is becoming more marked. [...]
What happened? The EU provided benefits to Scotland that the London-biased U.K. government did not. Scotland’s political culture, it turns out, is closer to the EU than that of London-based Tories. And years of punishing Thatcher rule in the 1980s soured many in Scotland against a reliance on the U.K. political system. The EU softened the neoliberalism of English Tory rule.
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