to my home town. It pains me to recall, but
among other things, I seem to have described
it in print as “the arse of the Black Country, in
itself the bumcrack of the West Midlands”.
In my defence, you often have to reject
things to work out how much they mean to
you (it applies to places as much as parents),
I had intense personal reasons to escape as a
young man, and there is a culture in the West
Midlands of telling self-deprecating stories
about your home town. When a corpse was
discovered in a kebab shop at the end of the
street I grew up on, and the story went viral
across the planet, I was sent the link to it by
dozens of amused residents of Wolverhampton.
When the city was named one of the worst
places on earth to live by Lonely Planet,
alongside San Salvador and Detroit, I was
texted the news by tens of people, most
of them from Wolverhampton. People from
Wales and the north may big up their home
towns, but West Midlanders tell war stories.
It’s part of what makes the people so bloody
charming. But I have come to realise that this
self-deprecation is part of what holds us back.
So let me start the fightback by bringing you
the news that while Wolverhampton may not
have a Pizza Express or Pret, it does, unlike
most towns, still have an HMV. Starbucks
may just be re-opening in the city centre
after a painful absence, but there’s long been
a Toni & Guy in town, and you can find most
designer labels at Flanells in the Mander
Centre. The art gallery in town is atmospheric
and handsome, packed with interesting
exhibits and home to a shiny new restaurant.
Wolverhampton Literature Festival is one of
the best around. St Peter’s Collegiate Church
is glorious. The industrial heritage, from the
offices of the Express & Star, which outsold
some national newspapers at its height, to the
Sunbeam motorcycle factory, is sensational.
The city’s racial diversity was hard won.
One-time local MP Enoch Powell brought the
town the wrong kind of attention, but it was
one of the first places in Britain to experience
mass immigration and I would argue that the
racial harmony of the city has proved Powell
wrong. The range and cheapness of Indian
food on offer is staggering. The city is
relentlessly friendly, as Katie, a London friend,
who came to Wolverhampton for a gig, put it
to me in a text: “I’ve made seven new friends.
And the whole weekend has cost about as
much as breakfast would do at Soho House.”
Also, in Wolverhampton we still have a
thriving bookshop, a branch of Waterstones.
It’s where I went to buy the first book anyone
in my household had ever owned, after I won
a book voucher as a prize at my primary
school. My father, who has never been able
to read or write, took me, and when I spotted
my own book, Empireland, on display in its
window the other day, I might have cried. nThe Times Magazine 17of South Yorkshire, complained that the train
from Sheffield to Manchester takes the same
time it took in 1954. It’s a story that is all too
familiar to towns and cities across the nation.
The second thing that needs emergency
attention: empty shops. You can have a thriving
manufacturing sector, like Wolverhampton has;
you can have a successful football team, like
Wolverhampton does; you can have vibrant,
sylvan suburbs, like Wolverhampton does. But
if too many of the shops in the city centre are
boarded up, the city will feel demoralised.
The exponential growth of the University
of Wolverhampton is heartening, the Grand
Theatre is revived after Covid, Wolverhampton’s
Civic Hall will return as a great venue for
gigs after its renovation, the new bus station,
built just over a decade ago, is more attractive
than the old one, and the new Department of
Housing, Communities and Local Government
offices, introduced after the government
declared Wolverhampton would become that
ministry’s second headquarters, will make the
city centre feel more vibrant. But the woeful
state of Queen Square, and the area around
it, drags the whole city down. City centres
like these need to be revived at any cost, and,
mercifully, the government seems to get it.
Levelling-up measures to revive England’s
high streets will reportedly include giving
councils powers to take control of buildings
for the benefit of their communities. Landlords
will have to make shops that have been vacant
for more than a year available to prospective
tenants, with local authorities able to bring
empty premises back into use and instigate
rental auctions of vacant commercial
properties. Charities, entrepreneurs, religious
groups and community organisations must
have ideas on how to use these spaces, and
even their worst ideas will surely be better
than rows of boarded-up outlets.
Priority three: stop bashing London. It
has become fashionable within government
to attack the capital, an attitude doubtless
accelerated by the Conservative Party’s recent
poor electoral performance in London. But
levelling London down will not level up other
towns and cities. The white paper admits
that “despite London being an economic
powerhouse, it contains significant pockets
of high deprivation”, and when it comes to
productivity, there are profound differences in
different parts of London. This country, and its
struggling cities and towns, need a booming
capital – it’s just that they need to be better
linked to it and be more like it. They need to
be more like London in terms of the culture
they offer visitors and residents; they need
public transport systems that mimic London’s
success; they need some of its appeal to
tourists; and they need local talent to stay.
Almost everyone I knew in Wolverhampton
who ended up with good exam results left
town, and it is striking that the majority of
people I met this year who were involved in
regenerating the city didn’t actually live in it.
They don’t need to be named and shamed for
it – I can’t talk, I’m not based in Wolvo. We
just need to find ways to persuade them to
come back.
Necessity four: a long-term, non-party-
political plan for regeneration devised and
implemented by local leaders. Let’s face it,
every initiative for the regions in our lifetime
has been painfully short-term. The white
paper focuses on 2030, which is at least
two general elections away, by which stage
Sir Boris Johnson will once again be cheerfully
holidaying with Russian oligarchs. Every
government I remember has had a shot
at levelling up and not been around long
enough to be held accountable. It will take a
generation to improve these towns and cities,
and the task should be planned in such terms.
Furthermore, party politics need to be takenout of the enterprise. I have no doubt all
Wolverhampton’s MPs have a sincere desire to
see the town improve, but rather than working
together, they invest significant amounts
of energy criticising what one another’s
government did or did not do for the city.
As it happens, Andy Street, the West
Midlands mayor, provides an illustration of how
to work together: he may be a Conservative,
but this didn’t stop him recently touring a
factory with Labour’s Sadiq Khan, and he
does not seem to be someone who enjoys the
inanity of party politics. Though on top of all
this, the non-party-political local politicians with
a long-term plan need to be given power. In
terms of the ability to raise taxes, Britain is the
most centralised among G7 nations. Decision-
making is also concentrated in London, with
the Treasury having the ultimate say on most
infrastructure spending. The government
suggests more devolution, a promise routinely
made but almost never fulfilled. It is absolutely
essential for these towns and cities that
central government and national politicians
fight their instincts and give up key powers.
Which brings me to the final change that we
need to see: demoralised towns and cities need
to talk themselves up. I’m thinking here mainly
of Wolverhampton and the West Midlands.
And among West Midlanders, I’m thinking
mainly of myself. For there is no getting over
the fact that, as a young man, I took a brickbatSTRUGGLING CITIES NEED
A BOOMING CAPITAL – IT’S
JUST THAT THEY NEED TO
BE MORE LIKE IT