The writer chairs the Social Mobility Commission and is principal and CEO, Blackpool and The Fylde College

I witnessed the Tottenham riot in 1985, lived in Salford during the riots in 1992 and went to lead a school desegregation project in Oldham after the unrest in 2001. I saw the 2011 riots unfold in Manchester and now, in 2024, work in Blackpool — one of the areas involved in recent disturbances.

We should not oversimplify, but there seems to have been a shift over this period from urban unrest linked to race and equal opportunity, mainly in big cities, to social friction linked to immigration in towns and seaside resorts. This points to a new geography of disadvantage, something the Social Mobility Commission has been collating evidence on for some time. The Levelling Up white paper of 2022 was the first formal exploration of this new landscape. It recognised how interconnected factors shape the decline of places and how difficult it is to reverse the downward spiral. But it was weak on two important issues.