For decades, successive governments have avoided explicit industrial goals, wary of Britain’s poor performance in the 1970s. But growing concern about productivity and regional inequality means that industrial policy is back and has a distinctly local flavour. What should a government committed to ‘levelling up’ do to revive flagging regions? How should local decisions be made and funded? What does this mean for cities like Bristol, facing trade-offs between reviving their economies versus the risk of a new local lockdown?

The panel includes Torsten Bell (Resolution Foundation); Raquel Ortega-Argilés (City- REDI Institute, University of Birmingham) and Marianne Sensier (Alliance Manchester Business School) with chair Andy Bounds (FT).

In our ninth Festival of Economics, co-programmed by Diane Coyle and Richard Davies, economists and experts from around the world debate with each other – and their audiences – some of the key economic questions of our time.

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Festival of Economics: Levelling Up the Left Behind, Myth or Possibility?