Delaying economic regeneration projects betrays levelling up pledges - The Yorkshire Post says

While the Treasury is right to be cautious about the state of the nation’s finances, regions like Yorkshire should not be the ones that suffer the brunt of cutback.

Actions like these risk a lopsided recovery, when the country plots its way out of a recession. Areas that have already been left behind cannot afford another lopsided recovery. These communities are still feeling the effects of the previous recession.

There is a very real danger that levelling up is fast becoming a hollow slogan, to be trotted out by the Conservative Party in a bid to win votes.

But voters in regions like ours are beginning to see the policy for what it is. To borrow the old saying that ‘if it barks like a dog and looks like a dog, then it must be a dog’. And in this context it is a lame one at that too.

For many years this newspaper has campaigned for a One Yorkshire devolution deal. That’s because it believes that local leaders, freed of the bureaucracy of Whitehall, are best placed to take decisions that affect the communities that they live in and represent.

One of the stated objectives of levelling up is pride in place and the majority of people who live in this great county are proud of being from Yorkshire.

And delaying regeneration projects, just when arguably there is the greatest need for more of them, shows why our over-centralised politics is not working. This political inertia is going to lead to the widening of the schism between the governing parties and the electorate. And that could be perilous for our democracy, as recent events elsewhere in the world have shown.