More than rhetoric required this time

Scotland’s social mobility gap was exposed in a report released yesterday. Everything from educational attainment to pay packets is apparently reliant on little more than a postcode lottery, with huge regional variations across the nation.

In some parts of Scotland house prices are 4.4 times the average salary, in others up to eight times.

The differences, revealed by the social mobility commission, are certainly stark.

The commission’s chairman, the Rt Hon Alan Milburn, stated: “The country seems to be in the grip of a selfreinforcing spiral of ever-growing division.”

He warned that “tinkering around the edges” will do little to assist and cited a feeling of “political alienation and social resentment“throughout much of the UK.

Mr Milburn may well be right, but does the report really tell us much that we didn’t already know?

Calling for better efforts “to tackle the phenomenon of left-behind Britain” is all very well, but acting on such strong words is all too often the missing piece of the jigsaw.

Over the years, successive governments have grappled with regional variances and areas that repeatedly “underperform”.

Numerous studies have laid bare the issue – tackling it requires not only well-rehearsed rhetoric, but politicians with bold new ideas and the courage of their convictions.