{"id":376462,"date":"2025-08-27T02:09:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-27T02:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/376462\/"},"modified":"2025-08-27T02:09:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-27T02:09:11","slug":"try-telling-britain-it-aint-broken-politico","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/376462\/","title":{"rendered":"Try telling Britain it ain\u2019t broken \u2013 POLITICO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Then take Lord Street. The tree-lined high parade purportedly inspired France\u2019s Napoleon III, while living on Merseyside in exile during the 1830s, to rebuild Paris with wide boulevards.<\/p>\n<p>Now, the glass awnings hanging over the shuttered shops exemplify the faded splendor of the city. They\u2019ve not seen a window cleaner\u2019s squeegee for many a season. The use of what should be a prime hotel as emergency accommodation for Britain\u2019s asylum seeker backlog has further driven people toward Reform.<\/p>\n<p>The town is, by many measures, far from the most deprived in the U.K. But the local MP, Labour\u2019s Patrick Hurley, points out that residents frequently compare the Southport of today to the more prosperous and thriving one of their youth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe need to make sure we don\u2019t just trade on our past, on our faded grandeur as a town. I\u2019m very keen to ensure that the town\u2019s best days lie ahead of it,\u201d Hurley, in his customary flat cap, told POLITICO on a walk around the town. \u201cBut that can be done whilst paying homage and tipping the hat to the best of the past.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/13262229-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-7060815\"  \/>Prime Minister Keir Starmer is gearing up to fight back against the \u201cBroken Britain\u201d narrative that has been setting in. | Pool Photo by Tolga Akmen via EPA<\/p>\n<p>One way the Labour government hopes to reverse the lack of pride in the place is with splashy regeneration and building projects. Diverting funding to repair and reopen Southport\u2019s pier \u2014 which dates back to 1860 \u2014 was one of the marquee examples of the plan in Chancellor Rachel Reeves\u2019 spring spending review.<\/p>\n<p>Hurley hopes that, combined with more arts and culture projects, it will help drive tourism numbers back up and will show there\u2019s no need to \u201caccept decline as inevitable\u201d or to \u201clive on the fumes of nostalgia,\u201d which, he argues, \u201cis all Nigel Farage is offering right now.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Then take Lord Street. The tree-lined high parade purportedly inspired France\u2019s Napoleon III, while living on Merseyside in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":376463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[748,393,4884,1144,712,16,15,1764],"class_list":{"0":"post-376462","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-britain","11":"tag-england","12":"tag-great-britain","13":"tag-northern-ireland","14":"tag-scotland","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom","17":"tag-wales"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115098298930222918","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/376463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}