‘Going for growth’: what does it mean to the people in the street, - and for the streets themselves?

YOU WILL, I’m sure, have heard that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, gave a major speech at the end of last month. That her focus was on seeking to stimulate economic growth was unsurprising, given that the first of the ‘5 Missions for a Better Britain’ to which her party pledged ahead of the 2024 general election was to ‘Secure the highest sustained growth in the G7’.

She was speaking at a high-tech research establishment in Oxfordshire, all part of her messaging, shortly after returning from Davos and the rarified atmosphere of the Global Financial Summit. In both locations, her clear focus was on attracting international investment, and she made a point of name-checking “great companies like DeepMind, AstraZeneca, Rolls Royce… and of course Siemens” (the latter being her hosts for the speech).

Most of the media chatter in anticipation had been about the prospect of the Government supporting the idea of a third runway at Heathrow; and, indeed, that was the ‘big announcement’ that she kept for last. But I wonder if I was the only person to consider it bizarre (wasn’t it? really?) that an extra airport runway in West London should be such a focal point in a speech that was about the future of the whole UK economy. But perhaps this merely underlines the fact that the Chancellor wasn’t really speaking to people like you or me, but to ‘business’ and the investors to whom she’s plainly trying to appeal.

The Chancellor’s message is clear - the Government is prioritising a quest for growth

If you heard or have read what she said in her speech, it may well be that, like me, you were struck by just how often the word ‘growth’ was mentioned, one might even say proclaimed. I have counted 52 uses of that specific word, and 11 further uses of either ‘grow’ or ‘growing’. And all delivered from a lectern on which were emblazoned the words ‘Kickstart Economic Growth’ – just in case we might miss something.

In amongst the additional 5,000+ words that Reeves delivered was one that she used just twice. It is perhaps surprising that she used it at all, but given the bent of my mind and the general themes I explore in this column, it was one that caught my ear.

That word is ‘streets’, and it appeared in two consecutive paragraphs, very early on. In the first, Reeves asserted that, “Without growth, we cannot cut hospital waiting lists or put more police on the streets”. Now, although that first reference to streets is not of direct relevance to my purpose on this occasion, it did at least seem to help connect the speech to down to earth matters. So, too, did her statement, a couple of sentences later that, “most of all, without economic growth we cannot improve the lives of ordinary working people”.

High tech must have!
New Stellium data centre at Cobalt Business Park on Tyneside - the kind of developments the Government is encouraging.

The Chancellor didn’t pause to allow her listeners to wonder what regard she has for the lives of ‘ordinary people’ who aren’t currently working or cannot work. Instead, she went straight on to tell us that, “Growth isn’t simply about lines on a graph. It’s about the pounds in people’s pockets. The vibrancy of our high streets. And the thriving businesses that create wealth, jobs and new opportunities for us, for our children, and grandchildren.”

At this second early mention of streets, specifically high streets, you might imagine that my ears pricked up even more. That said, I’m wary of the use of any variant of ‘vibrant’ in connection with high streets, because it’s a term often used to create an effect, rather than to convey any real meaning. Like saying a development is ‘sustainable’ or that safety is ‘paramount’; or indeed that you want to ‘boost’ the economy (or – who knows? – maybe even ‘grow’ it).

Nevertheless, from my perspective, this single paragraph came closer than any other to connecting all the talk of ‘growth’ with the actual, tangible benefits that the ‘person in the street’ might recognise.

All too quickly, however, following her brief alliterative flourish with pounds, people and pockets (I hoped for talk of a ‘vision for vibrancy’ in vain), Reeves was back to ‘lines on a graph’ in the form of “thriving businesses that create wealth” etc.

She also went very rapidly from referencing “a country of strong communities, with small and local businesses at their heart” to stating that “we are at the forefront of some of the most exciting developments in the world… like artificial intelligence and life sciences… with great companies (like those aforementioned) delivering jobs and investment across Britain”. But are they really impacting people “across Britain”, and will they? Or is their impact necessarily confined to the comparatively few places where they have their plants, such as “Europe’s Silicon Valley” of which the Chancellor dreams between Oxford and Cambridge?

Reeves also spoke of recently leading “a delegation to China for the first Economic and Financial Dialogue since 2019, alongside ‘world-leading financial service businesses’, including HSBC, Standard Chartered and Schroders”. This, she asserted, unlocked £600 million of tangible benefits for the UK economy, but did not elucidate concerning who or where might experience this benefit.

So, returning to that mission statement about securing the highest sustained growth in the G7, what has motivated me to write this particular piece is the question, “What on earth does a pledge expressed like that mean to ‘ordinary people’”? How many of those who put their cross against Labour last July went to the ballot box chanting softly to themselves, “I’m voting for Growth”? How many of us compare our circumstances with those of people in other G7 nations? How many of us, indeed, could say with certainty which those seven nations are, and what the G7 really is or does?

High Street must die?
Reeves made little direct reference to any measures to regenerate town centres

As for the distribution and measurement of that magic elixir of life, GDP, which Reeves also mentioned twice, how many ordinary people know what each of those initials stand for or, if they do, wake up wondering how the Gross Domestic Product is doing today?

In posing these rhetorical questions, I’m conscious of opening myself up to accusations of naïvety. “Ordinary people don’t need to have a grasp of GDP, John, they just need to benefit from its growth”, I might be told. “They don’t need to understand about the need for high and sustained growth, but the number of pounds in their pockets depends on it.”

A fair enough point to argue – at least in theory. But to any such thoughts, I counter with another two questions, which might also be considered naïve: “For most ‘ordinary people’, is there any real relationship between GDP growth and ‘my personal benefit from achieving it’?” and, perhaps more pertinently, “Is GDP growth really the all-important and overriding shared objective for the nation?”

Aren’t these two questions – which might be summarised as “What is really important to ‘ordinary people?” – worth some debate before the Government goes gangbusters on topping the global GDP league table? (There’s another piece of alliteration I offer freely to any tabloid headline writers.)

On the street
Social interaction in a human scale environment

In that context, let’s get back down to street level and those high streets and local communities which the Chancellor sought, rather unconvincingly, to weave into her speech. What might actually be done to bring new ‘vibrancy’, economic activity, jobs and some enjoyable social life, interaction and sense of community and belonging right to where most people spend most of their lives?

Can’t we, shouldn’t we, nurture a kind of ‘Growth’ that takes root at street level, appropriately targeted and measured so that we know we are putting those ‘pounds in people’s pockets’ and building those thriving local “businesses that create wealth, jobs and new opportunities for us, for our children, and grandchildren”? Isn’t that an objective that we could all more easily get behind, one that would really resonate with ‘ordinary people’; more than topping the G7 in GDP?

The Chancellor wisely avoided using the phrase ‘trickle down’ in her speech, but she did generally imply that ‘ordinary people’ won’t have more money unless ‘business’ can first make it. However, most of us have rightly become sceptical, and some cynical, about what proportion of the money made in the boardroom, so to speak, makes its way down to the street, where we are.

Online only
Our shopping is becoming remote and impersonal, but there must be some jobs in those warehouses (for now at least)

Based on what the Chancellor said at Davos about ‘tweaking’ proposals to phase out non-dom tax status, she seems more concerned about not scaring the super-rich than she does about, for example, working out how local bricks-and-mortar retail could have a more favourable tax regime than online retailers whose business models actively undermine the high street. There may be jobs in those colossal sheds next to motorway junctions, but not anything like enough to make up for the 170,000+ jobs lost in UK high street retail last year through an estimated average closure rate of 37 shops per day.

I’d also suggest that this Government should properly explore developing a system of Land Value Capture/Taxation to create a fund for re-investment in the towns and cities where the tax is raised. I’m also quite a fan of the Swedish tax on the uplift in value of private homes and commercial properties at the point of sale. But, y’know, I probably need to be more realistic than to expect that in this current Government term. (Or, sadly, ever.)

Sticking closer to my own day job, why not reassign a modest fraction of the road-building budget to local high street and town centre public realm improvement schemes? £1.3bn-worth of road schemes were cancelled by the Chancellor last October, in order to save money. Fair enough. But why not look again at the still gargantuan Road Investment Strategy 2 (RIS2) budget, which I estimate must still be above £20bn, and see if a chunk of it wouldn’t be better spent on public realm, active travel and traffic management schemes that support towns and high streets, rather than on the roads between them?

Retail flight
WH Smith is seeking to exit its high street presence, established for many years, in favour of concentrating on its outlets on airport concourses

I’m aware that those in Government (and not by any means just the present one) might see such schemes as small in scale, and trivial compared with the ‘big ticket’ announcements about things like third runways, ‘Silicon Valleys’, and shiny new Data Centres and AI research parks. But while Ministers and Council leaders have a proverbial aversion to cutting ribbons on transport projects that don’t look big and shiny, the truth is that the consistently highest benefit-to-cost projects tend to be comparatively small in scale. Such schemes could ‘boost’ ribbon-makers, too, and ‘unlock’ their potential!

It is perhaps ironic that the Banks being courted by the Chancellor to invest in new infrastructure, like HSBC, are amongst those exiting our high streets as they abandon their branches. (HSBC closed 114 branches in 2023, but have promised not to close any more ‘until at least 2026’.) Retail chains like WH Smith are leaving the high street, too, with a recent headline I saw suggesting that half their 500 high street stores could go. By contrast, the company says it’s more than content to retain and expand its airport outlets, targeting what are effectively captive audiences there. And you may also have heard that Lloyds bank is closing 230 branches this year and next, making the Government’s seeming prioritisation of the concerns of banks even more of an affront to ‘ordinary people’.

No money here
Banks like HSBC are being courted by the Government for new investment, but are meanwhile closing their local branches

The thing is, that despite my wariness of the word ‘vibrancy’ in the high street context, it does describe something of the joys of streets, the reasons we go there, and why streets are so important. They’re places ‘ordinary people’ go to do things; to meet other people; to exchange pounds, ideas and gossip; to live part of life. Internet banking may be convenient for some, but it isn’t for everyone. These banks and other companies may have their own business reasons for deserting the high streets, but I would want such closures to cause the PM and Chancellor to care more about what that means for the communities affected than they appear to care for the balance sheets of those businesses.

Similar, and wider, considerations seemed also to be on the Editor’s mind as he wrote his own opinion piece in TAPAS, 3 February 2025 (see article). Provoked, rather than inspired, by the Chancellor’s monologue, he asked, “Should growth trump everything?” Having done so, he went on to ask whether the Government’s plans will really deliver the growth it wants, where will the benefits be, which people will gain, what casualties there may be, and what adverse social and environmental consequences might arise?

“Will there”, he also asked, “be equivalent investment in local facilities that make the daily lives of individuals better – for example in better public transport, a better public realm, and better neighbourhoods?” Local democratic and community voices should be valued, he said, not disempowered or dismissed as ‘blockers’ or NIMBYs, as Reeves and the PM have frequently appeared to do.

The overarching theme of that editorial, as I read it, is summarised in the following passage.

“The beneficial outcomes (of growth) need to be seen alongside other matters. Not just economic ones, but the way society develops, confidence in democracy and fairness, and what makes up a good life and feeling of hope and purpose amongst ordinary people – or the ‘ordinary working people’ the Prime Minister is (and his ministers are) so frequently heard referring to.”

The piece finished with a long quote from the English economic and social historian, Richard Henry Tawney, an abridged version of which is as follows:

“If economic ambitions are good servants, they are bad masters. The most obvious facts are most easily forgotten. Both the existing economic order and too many of the projects advanced for reconstructing it break down through their neglect of the truism that, since even quite common men have souls, no increase in material wealth will compensate them for arrangements which insult their self-respect and impair their freedom.”

Tawney was concerned about the quest for material wealth at the expense of men’s souls, self- respect and freedom

Money proverbially doesn’t buy you happiness, and just because it’s a cliché doesn’t make the statement untrue. ‘Ordinary people’ (like me, and maybe you) may be conditioned, often by businesses trying to sell them products, and sometimes also by Chancellors, to believe that happiness is to be found in having more stuff. But most of us know that, while money may give us a wider range of options, at the heart of what really brings us peace, joy and satisfaction are a sense of purpose, a feeling of belonging, and the absence of what I tend to call existential fear. Maybe also the feeling that we’re not being exploited, taken for granted, or talked down to; that there is fairness.

While this may also be considered naïve, I stick by it. Indeed, I go further, by contending that what’s missing from the Chancellor’s and the Prime Minister’s rhetoric is any clear answer to my question, “What is really important to ‘ordinary people’?” (aka the electorate).

I get the need to play to ‘business’, but that’s not the same as merely dancing to its tune. Meanwhile, for all the talk of growth, all the ‘missions’, all the “We’re not that shambles of the current Government” of their election campaign messaging, and all the received wisdom that the one thing politicians care about most is getting re-elected, observe how this Government’s approval ratings have plummeted.

The latest YouGov survey of national voting intentions, were there to be a general election, has the Conservatives on 21%, Labour on 24% and Reform on 25%. I’ll just leave that there.

Some of you may recall that I criticised the previous Prime Minister in these pages, along with his Transport Secretary, for pursuing a ‘pro-driving’ policy. My main reason for doing so was not that the policy was an irresponsible act of desperation, though it was. It was chiefly that, although it might have sounded attractive to some vested interests, the policy (a) didn’t connect with actual voters, as was later proved, and (b) was inconsistent with several of that same government’s other established policies and priorities.

In similar fashion, I think the present PM and his Chancellor, and indeed the Cabinet, would do very well to reflect on how the trumpeting of ‘Growth’ plays with the electorate, not just ‘business’, and on the extent to which the current rush for said growth is at odds with other priorities that the Government is committed to pursuing; priorities which might well lead to truly sustained and beneficial growth in the longer term.

Actively or, as I suspect, passively, the Government’s pursuit of growth seen only in terms of GDP risks setting at nought the quality of life of ‘ordinary people’. I conclude that the Government simply hasn’t thought, or isn’t thinking, of what ‘the person on the street’ really needs and wants. In her big speech, Reeves said she was guided by one clear principle above all: to act in the national interest. But, again, that’s not a phrase that means much to the person in the street. Pounds in pockets may be a simple metric and a handy soundbite but, as numerous recent opinion polls indicate, such words aren’t meeting ‘ordinary people’ where they are.

Talking about the national interest is not the same as convincing people you have their best interests at heart.

I am very keenly aware that many people are struggling to make ends meet, and that ‘the cost-of-living crisis’ is not just a term that’s overused by politicians and headline writers. However, irrespective of any scepticism about the extent to which money made by ‘business’ will flow to ‘ordinary people’, the fact is that an excessive focus on pounds in pockets risks overlooking so much else that makes for human happiness.

As I find myself often saying these days, this is a matter of both/and, not either/or. It’s not that it’s unimportant to try and attract international investment, or to give confidence to banks and business, but it is that it’s also important to think about ‘ordinary people’, about what’s important to them, beyond just money, and about the high streets and neighbourhoods that are the backdrop to, and often backbone of, their daily lives.