There is much to criticise in the government’s levelling up fund and its outrageous bias towards Conservative constituencies, not least the prime minister’s own. But there is one decision I applaud without reservation: the £50m pledged to bring the Eden Project eco-tourist attraction to Morecambe.
To understand why, we must return to 1993, when the Guardian dispatched a travel writer to the Lancashire riviera. Her verdict was brutal. “I wanted to say, sod the nuclear plants and the sewage, Morecambe Bay is still beautiful. Go green. Take a train to Morecambe. Skip those contrived heritage towns. Come and wallow in genuine Thirties style. But I can’t. Because Morecambe in the Nineties is a dump,” wrote Alison Rice.
