The test of first-rate intelligence, so F. Scott Fitzgerald said, is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. This came to mind when going through the Levelling Up White Paper because it does pose the same challenge. On the one hand the White Paper’s twelve bold, national missions are to be achieved by 2030. On the other hand forty different schemes or bodies were introduced to boost local or regional growth between 1975 and 2015, which equates to roughly one a year. On the one hand levelling up has been, ‘from day one’, the defining mission of this government. On the other hand the White Paper was 856 days in the making and might only have been published when it finally was to distract from ‘ Partygate ’. On the one hand City Region Sustainable Transport Settlements, with an investment package of £5.7bn for eight English city regions, will transform local transport networks through London-style integrated settlements. O