David Olusoga: ‘The UK is less equal than when I was young’

The United Kingdom is becoming less and less united, says historian David Olusoga - not just along its borders but within each of its four nations. How can the union's ties be renewed?

"London's much more dominant than it was when I was growing up," Mr Olusoga says. "In the 1970s, Britain was a much more equal society than it is today."

Few other capital cities have a profile as powerful as the UK's, he says.

"Most nations have a capital city that is not enormously out of scale with the other cities."

Olusoga says London's dominance shows how divisions in the UK's union do not just run along borders but within nations themselves.

The historian - who has a new BBC Two series about the story of the union of the UK - grew up during the de-industrialisation of north-east England in the 1980s. The closure of factories, coal mines and shipyards swept across the region, causing widespread job losses and unemployment.

More than half a century later, it is not possible - he says - to "rely on industry spreading wealth and opportunity around the four nations".

"We talk about left behind towns. We talk about levelling up," he says.

"The urgency of doing something, I think, is apparent to many people, journalists, politicians, and whether we can rise to that challenge and in some ways, renew our bonds, renew the union.

"That is one of the big questions of the next decades."