Sarah Hall considers how global economic shocks can impact regional inequality and argues that any economic devolution agenda must confront the trade-offs that arise as a result, using the example of the Jaguar Land Rover job losses.

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced that it will cut 4,000 jobs over the next two years. The company currently employs 44,000 people of whom the vast majority – 34,000 – are based in the UK. The job losses will be focused on its Coventry head office.

The announcement comes at an important time for the Burnham government. On the same day as the JLR announcement, Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey delivered his ‘Growth Speech’ in which he reiterated the government’s commitment to “more investment, more innovation and more jobs”. The JLR announcement clearly shows the difficult trade-offs the government faces as it tries to deliver these ambitions in terms of: profound regional economic inequality in the UK; the UK’s place in a more protectionist international economy; and the relationship between green growth and economic resilience.

JLR’s announcement is a reminder that even low levels of growth are distributed in highly unequal regional ways in the UK. This means that the impacts of declining economic prospects and redundancies in any one sector are not evenly distributed across the UK. In the case of automotive, figures show that the West and East Midlands, (the former housing JLR’s UK activities) account for 48.3% of the UK’s automotive value added. This concentration is delivered partly by large headquarter bases. But these headquarters also act as anchors to significant clusters of small and medium enterprises that have developed specialist niches within complex and dynamic automotive supply chains. This was clearly seen by the impact of the temporary shutdown of JLR activities in late 2025 following a cyberattack. Some of the most significant impacts were felt by smaller firms which were forced to temporarily suspend operations and cancel orders.

At one level, this regional concentration might benefit from the new government’s commitment to greater devolution – which offers the prospect of being able to better tailor pro-growth economic policies to the specific requirements of different parts of the UK, notably in skills. However, the risks need to be acknowledged. Threats to regionally concentrated industries need to be framed as important for UK growth as a whole and not left to newly emerging forms of devolved administration. This is particularly important given the ways in which contractions in one sector impact the social fabric and cultural identity of places, and regions that are dependent on one industry will have less resilience to economic shocks.

Turning to geopolitics, the JLR announcement is one of the clearest examples of the challenges the Prime Minister faces in his ambitions to ‘reindustrialise’ the UK economy at a time when the world economy is becoming more protectionist. The causes for the financial difficulties facing JLR are many and varied, but central among them is its exposure to the new US tariff regimes. JLR is particularly exposed to US industrial policy because the US represents its second biggest export market (after the EU) with one in four of its cars being sold there. New tariffs were announced by the US for car imports in April 2025 as part of a commitment to support the US car industry. The tariff rate for the UK changed over the spring and this uncertainty itself was unhelpful for companies such as JLR in terms of planning. The agreement reached with the UK was that the UK would have a lower rate than other countries of 10% on the first 100,000 UK manufactured cars imported to the US per annum with any imports over this have a 27.5% tariff applied (the rate applied to the majority of US automotive imports).

These tariff changes were cited as leading to a decline of 15% in JLR sales in spring 2025, with the company pausing shipments to the US in April 2025 until the UK’s final tariff rate was confirmed. Beyond the US, there are other threats to reindustrialising the UK’s economy. Support for UK manufacturing through subsidies has not been forthcoming, due, in large part, to fiscal constraints. And the EU’s Made in Europe program, which seeks to protect EU manufacturers from competition, particularly from China, poses threats to British based manufacturers by excluding them from subsidies to EU firms.

Finally, the government faces difficult decisions regarding how to deliver growth in ways that are both environmentally and economically sustainable. In many ways, the automotive sector is at the forefront of these trade-offs. Currently, the UK has a mandate that requires 80% of all new cars sold to be EV’s by 2030. However, the new government has announced that it will hold a consultation to consider whether such a requirement should be watered down. Whilst concerns have been expressed that such changes will make it harder for the UK to meets its electrification and climate goals, car makers and trade unions argue that the current target threatens jobs. Manufacturers such as JLR point to the fact that there is not the demand for such a number of EVs in the UK, partly due to the higher electricity prices the UK has compared to most other advanced economies. Moreover, its sales to rapidly growing international markets such as China have declined as China has invested heavily in the production of its own more affordable domestic vehicles. Indeed, Chinese manufacturers, such as BYD, have been growing their market share rapidly in the UK with Chery’s Jaecoo being the third best-selling car in the UK in 2026, leading to it being dubbed the Temu Range Rover.

Taken together, JLR’s redundancy announcement is a stark reminder that attempts to devolve and reindustrialise the UK economy to deliver much needed growth need to acknowledge the challenges and difficult choices involved in relation to protectionist tariff wars and green growth. But perhaps most importantly these policy dilemmas play out on an already highly uneven regional industrial landscape that makes the trade-offs even starker in certain parts of the UK.

By Professor Sarah Hall, Professor of Geography at the University of Cambridge.

The Bayeux Tapestry | Image by: AP Photo / Kin Cheung / Alamy

4 min read23 min

I still can’t quite believe that it’s here. I have had the great privilege of being the UK government special envoy for the loan of the Bayeux Tapestry and have been involved in the intricate negotiations with the French side to transport and exhibit a fragile and very precious 950 year-old embroidery safely and securely. Over recent weeks, I have been in the room accompanying VIP visitors. But this week I went as a visitor, to see it as a million others will in the next 10 months.

The exhibition has been carefully thought out by the British Museum professionals. As you approach the Sainsbury Gallery, you walk back in time. You are first confronted with a group of deadly looking weapons of the period. As the light level lowers, you go up the stairs to a mezzanine with panels on the history. Then, a breathtaking bird’s eye view of the tapestry, bringing home its full 70 metre scale.

Once down the stairs, I found it intensely moving to be up close to this astonishing window onto life in the 11th century. And I mean up close. One of the great achievements of the exhibition is the showcase. Made of the most high-tech glass, it gives robust protection to the tapestry while allowing visitors to get within a few inches of it. The colours glow in the subdued light. The details are arrestingly clear: the facial expressions, the subtle differentiation in clothes and hairstyles, food being cooked and castles and boats being built, the dynamic movement of the horses urging the action forward and, later, the grizzly scenes of fighting and dying.

The colours glow in the subdued light. The details are arrestingly clear

The wealth of detail presents its own problem. If you start by studying every scene, you won’t get to the end in the 40 minutes allocated for each visitor and those behind you will soon get restless. Flow control is going to be an issue. It’s therefore a good idea to do some homework beforehand and decide which scenes you want to focus in on. I recommend The Story of the Bayeux Tapestry by the British Museum curator Michael Lewis and historian Dave Musgrove. 

The tapestry can be enjoyed as a sweeping narrative of knightly derring-do. But there is a lot of politics as well, turning on Duke William’s justification for invading England and wresting the crown from Harold. My favourite scene (number 23) is a moment of high diplomacy. Before the conquest, Harold is in France campaigning alongside William in Bayeux. With William watching intently, Harold stretches out awkwardly, touching two reliquaries.

The tapestry tells us he is making a sacred oath to William. Was it to support William’s claim to the English throne? If so, Harold perjured himself with his coronation on King Edward’s death. The succession was still a touchy subject in England in the late 1060s, when the ladies of Canterbury probably embroidered this masterpiece. So the tapestry is diplomatically silent. 

As an exercise in cultural diplomacy, this loan has already created powerful moments of UK-French unity such as the opening ceremony with the King, President Macron and Prime Minister. The tapestry is having wider impact than any show since Tutankhamun in the 1970s – not surprisingly since 1066 is central to our national story. Its visual cartoon-like language is a gift to social media and appeals directly to young people. The British Museum have an ambitious schools outreach programme and dedicated time for school groups from Britain and France. 

Some experiences surpass expectations. This show is definitely one of those. More tickets will be on sale soon. Do go. It may be a thousand years before you get another chance.

Lord Ricketts is a crossbench peer and former UK Ambassador to France

3 min read12 min

But at Demos, we’ve been showing that politicians can have exactly those conversations with the public, and the public with each other.

This year, we’ve been working with the Home Affairs Select Committee to run public deliberation on immigration across the country, and with MPs to trial new ways of engaging with constituents.

Earlier this week, we launched a report for the Home Affairs Committee based on in-person deliberative workshops on work-related immigration we held in March and May with 89 people across the country, in partnership with the House of Commons and King’s College London. Participants reflected each area’s demographics and views on immigration, enabling the Committee to hear from a cross-section of the public, not just the loudest voices.

Over a weekend, participants heard balanced information from experts, discussed the issues, and developed principles to guide the Home Affairs Committee on work-related immigration. The principles demonstrate how much common ground there really is. Within each workshop, as well as hundreds of miles apart, the same principles independently came up again and again.

We set the tone at the outset of the conversations, asking participants to anticipate disagreement, but to handle it respectfully. The room was almost quiet as the conversations happened in small groups. Participants were genuinely listening to each other, not talking over each other. Almost all (92 per cent) felt they had changed their minds over the course of the workshop as a result of hearing others’ views. How often does that happen on social media or on the doorstep?

MPs ’ offices don’t have the same resources as select committees for these conversations. Our new model of MP-constituent engagement recognises that, but our pilots have shown it’s still possible to have better conversations between MPs and constituents, and constituents with each other.

We are currently partway through our latest pilot in Worcester with Tom Collins MP. We brought together a small group of Worcester constituents who hadn’t previously been in touch with their MP over two Saturday afternoons to discuss how immigration impacts the local area, and how constituents and the MP can work together to strengthen Worcester’s community.

The conversation was open and respectful. Almost all (90 per cent) said they thought differently about something as a result of the discussion. And the conversations brought something rare: hope. Ninety-five per cent of participants are optimistic about what will happen as a result of the conversations.

Now the wider Worcester community gets to have its say in a live online conversation using pol.is. Using bridge-based ranking, pol.is does the opposite of social media: the algorithm rewards consensus, rather than division.

Polarisation on immigration is not inevitable. It is a product of the spaces we create for conversations, and those spaces can be designed differently. When they are, the public can find common ground and help create better policy. This changes the way the public sees policymaking, too: people start to understand how complex immigration policy is and value the opportunity to have a say, and, as a result, feel more positively about the decisions made by policymakers.

After taking part in the workshops for the Committee, participants were more likely to feel the government’s immigration policies address concerns they have about immigration (from 24 per cent before to 44 per cent after), and in Worcester, that their MP listens to constituents and makes decisions based on their input (from 40 per cent to 100 per cent).

Better conversations make better policy with more public buy-in. Get in touch if you’re interested in giving conversations like these a go.

Hana Kapetanovic is lead researcher at Demos

Help and support:

Firefighters dampen down the burnt-out remains of a house on 14 August in Stourbridge (PA Images/Alamy)

3 min read35 min

Climate change is no longer a distant threat; it is here with us and we must face up to the fact that it will keep getting worse until we stop burning fossil fuels.

As a former NHS worker, I care deeply about public safety. Right now, our emergency services are being stretched to the limit, and the people we represent are the ones paying the price.

Climate scientists have been clear for years that these events are directly linked to the continued burning of fossil fuels. Yet right now, the government is mulling over whether to approve Rosebank, the largest undeveloped oil field in the UK.

When the Prime Minister visited Stourbridge this month, he rightly said we need to take climate change seriously. The decision on Rosebank, expected soon, will be the biggest test of this statement.

After the courts ruled that the full emissions from burning the fossil fuels extracted must be considered in the consenting process, Rosebank’s developers were forced to admit that its true climate impact over a 25-year period would equate to almost 70 per cent of the UK’s entire annual emissions. To sign off on Rosebank now would lock us into a colossal amount of emissions at the precise moment the science tells us we have to pull back.

Tragically, it is ordinary people and workers like those in my community who will pay the price.

It’s families like those who saw their homes go up in flames along with their possessions and, in some cases, their pets. It’s the firefighters who across the country are on the front line of this emergency but are grossly overstretched. Firefighters who themselves have called on Andy Burnham to stop drilling for more fossil fuels. And it’s the NHS patients sweltering in hospital wards deemed unsafe and “dangerously hostile”.

We keep hearing the same tired argument that projects like Rosebank offer energy security. But the reality is that over 90 per cent of the North Sea’s reserves are already gone. 

And in the case of Rosebank, the vast majority of its reserves are oil, nearly all of which will be exported.

The events of this summer do not begin to scratch the surface of what lies ahead

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Extracting what is left will do nothing to help struggling families facing the consequences of yet another fossil fuel price shock. It won’t knock a penny off energy bills and will further fuel the climate crisis that is pushing up the cost of food and other vital goods. 

This isn’t a choice between the climate and British industry. As the basin declines, jobs supported by the North Sea have more than halved over the past decade despite the previous Conservative government issuing hundreds of new licences and companies raking in record profits.

Unlike the Conservatives and Reform UK, we know the only way to truly reindustrialise North Sea communities is by creating good, unionised jobs in industries with a long-term future. The decision on Rosebank will define where this government truly stands: on the side of people facing increasing climate damage, or with mega-multinationals who have profited to the tune of billions from war and spiralling bills.

If we are serious about protecting places like Stourbridge from worse fires and harsher weather, Westminster needs to show more courage. We simply cannot fight fires with one hand while pouring fuel on them with the other. 

Cat Eccles is Labour MP for Stourbridge

(Alamy)

4 min read10 min

The plans are inspired by European countries like Denmark, where the government uses literature to instruct the public on what steps to take within the first 72 hours.

The Tories say they also want the government to be more honest with the country about threats facing the nation, which could include declassifying information held by the state.

Shadow defence minister David Reed is leading on the party’s national resilience policies.

In an interview with PoliticsHome, the Conservative MP for Exmouth and Exeter East said the coronavirus pandemic had created a public mindset that the state can do everything for them, when, in the event of a national emergency, people will need to take steps themselves, especially in the first hours and days.

“The onus needs to be pushed back onto the citizen to say, if things are coming down the track… you need to start thinking more about yourselves and your families, and start preparing so that you can be more resilient and really start to reinvigorate that idea of being a citizen, contributing, and being part of the community,” Reed said.

“By physically giving something to someone, posting it through their door, what I want to see is the narrative in people’s minds change.”

The government is preparing to launch a public awareness campaign around household resilience later this year, with a spokesperson telling PoliticsHome: “The campaign will bring the UK in line with European countries that run similar campaigns already. We’ll announce further details in due course.”

Last month, the Financial Times reported that people would be encouraged to stockpile emergency supplies, including tinned food and bottled water, as part of the push to help households prepare for hostile state acts, cyber warfare, and extreme weather.

In an interview with Sky News Defence Insider, published on Thursday, Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said the UK does “need to have a national conversation about resilience”.

Streeting pointed not just to state-based threats but climate-based disruption, too, and said people should consider practical questions, like “in the event you have a power cut, would you know where you keep your torch? Have you even got matches or candles?”

Last week, the National Audit Office warned that government had not done enough to engage with households and businesses to strengthen resilience to supply chain shocks.

Reed, a former Marine, is concerned that the planned comms campaign will “fall flat” unless it goes as far as giving every household in the country a readiness pamphlet.

A version being drawn up by Conservatives, seen by PoliticsHome, seeks to communicate that, for a short period after a national emergency or major disruption, it will be up to people to take action where the government cannot help. It sets out a three-point household response, based on stockpiling supplies, making a plan and checking on each other, and lists key items to have in an emergency kit.

The European Commission has encouraged citizens to stockpile enough supplies to last for 72 hours to increase readiness, following in the footsteps of Germany and Nordic states.

“If you look at the Danes, if you look at the Dutch, and if you look at some other European countries, they produce a pamphlet, and they deliver it to every single house in the country, and it just goes through really simply in a nice, civilian-digestible way,” Reed said.  

At the same time, the shadow minister said the government should look for non-military figures to communicate the importance of preparedness, especially to young people, and said ministers should “definitely” consider influencers as campaign spokespeople.

The Conservative MP argued that due to the UK having experienced peaceful decades since the mid-20th century, resilience has become “such an abstract concept”, especially for younger generations, “that you can’t even have the conversation at all”.

He referred to the experience of his 84-year-old father, born in 1942 during the Blitz in Plymouth: “That’s the last generation that has any sort of real semblance, that physical idea of border insecurity and things not being right in terms of security”.

“Work does need to be done with the younger generation because they will be helping out. They will have to help out with all these efforts,” Reed stressed. 

He also called for a greater central government focus on resilience, pointing to Denmark, where they have their “own ministry for national resilience and preparedness, and they’ve got a centralised minister that has been able to work with the different departments to be able to have the conversation about what needs to be done, to be able to set targets”.