"At a panel discussion, six senior officials from across the north of England vie to seduce an audience of investors – like Dragons’ Den for property tycoons – to choose their city to build major new property developments. After decades of Tory austerity, and with no sign of Labour restoring council funding to its full pre-2010 levels, this is what Britain’s municipalities are reduced to: grubbing for cash to build projects they cannot afford to fund themselves. It’s an unedifying spectacle to see local governments pleading at the feet of international capital."
The Guardian · In Cannes, I saw English councils pander to gilet-wearing property developers – at the cost of their residents