Actually, this would work

Larry Elliott tells us that Boris must now do something for the North. Perhaps so, one nation conservatism does mean that all in the nation should benefit. The thing is though, why wouldn’t this work?

Boris Johnson now has to deliver for voters in his newly won seats in Wales, the Midlands and the north. He is unlikely to do so with an agenda of labour market deregulation and spending cuts.

In the medium to long term, as Paul Krugman has pointed out, it’s pretty much all about productivity. And labour market deregulation aids in boosting productivity simply because it makes the adoption and deployment of new technologies easier. Thus more of it is done.

We can look back into our own past history of rigid and union defined labour markets to see the truth of this, British industry did not cover itself in glory in the manner it adopted new ways of doing things now, did it?

There is also the more theoretical point that we know what boosts productivity - market competition. Wages do indeed follow productivity therefore we need the competition to drive them up over time. This being true of labour markets too.