We recently bought a house in an old and strange corner of Kent, close to where I grew up. Romney Marsh is known for various things — sheep, smuggling, a narrow-gauge steam railway — but one other noticeable local phenomenon is the abundance of what are sometimes called “lost villages”. These sites are now uninhabited, where there was once a substantial population. Generally there are few physical traces remaining, with the exception of churches. Within a day’s walk of my childhood home, you can find the ruins of at least three churches, as well as surviving but redundant ones that no longer serve a community, like the photogenic Fairfield.

The Black Death seems to have been the chief culprit for the abandonment of settlements, as elsewhere in England, though the persistence of malaria on the marsh may also have played a role (it remained a problem well into the 18th century). I occasionally wonder what it was like for the last remaining residents of such places, watching the old familiar buildings fall into rack and ruin. What were their names, those last few holdouts? What happened to them?

The ability to pay your own way is not the only test of value

Communities being allowed to completely disappear, for one reason or another, has long been a commonplace in Britain, with at least 3,000 abandoned villages identified nationwide. Even into the 19th century, deserted or near-deserted villages were a far from unusual sight in Cornwall, as the mining industry declined. Something like a quarter of a million men left Cornwall between 1860 and 1900, seeking opportunities elsewhere in the UK (notably in the emerging Northumbrian coalfields) and around the world.

Something has clearly changed, culturally or politically. It would not have occurred to Gladstone, say, that the government should set up a Cornish Tin Communities Sustainability Fund, when the economic viability of villages centred on a dying industry had collapsed. Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves, on the other hand, has announced that a Labour government would implement a rescue package for hard-pressed British seaside towns, consisting of tax breaks, stricter regulation of sewage and new publicity campaigns.

Without wanting to get too involved in the detail of this particular debate, it is fascinating to me that there are such strong taboos around what can be said in response to the decline of certain towns or cities. It would be very dangerous, for example, for a politician to say that a particular community has become unviable to the point that it should be allowed or encouraged to decline or disappear. Similarly, as an astute Twitter friend of mine noted, a politician who said that somewhere like Blackpool or Skegness had no future as a seaside resort but instead could be the site of a freeport or the centre of a fracking industry, would likely face a storm of criticism over their dismissive attitude to the tradition and heritage of a place.

I’m not arguing here for a ruthless social Darwinism. It is true that economic success is not the only kind of success, and that settled ways of life in particular places have their own value and significance. The ability to pay your own way is not the only test of value. Nevertheless, the fact remains that the generosity of our redistributive system is dependent on the dynamism of businesses and places that actually make money and add value. Not everyone can or needs to be a net contributor to the public finances, but there are limits — especially at a time when Britain is losing economic ground.

Consider that only three out of twelve regions of the United Kingdom — London, the south east and the east of England — raise more money for the Treasury than they cost. It is at least arguable that it should be a goal of government policy to encourage internal migration from less vibrant and dynamic areas to more productive ones. This would undoubtedly have the downstream effect of making the communities from which those people move less productive and less viable.

Industry gave the north two centuries of unaccustomed economic power

The counter argument usually runs along the lines that this isn’t fair, that more should be done to encourage business investment and job creation in the West Midlands or the north east. Various governments have been trying this in different ways for decades, though, but they face serious structural barriers. The centre of gravity of English economic affairs has once again shifted decisively to London and the south east, where it was in mediaeval and early modern times, before the particular circumstances of the industrial revolution gave the north two centuries of unaccustomed economic power. After the great wave of social mobility that took place in the decades after the Second World War, with many talented people leaving small or declining towns and villages, many places are simply lacking in the kind of talent and ingenuity required to reinvigorate themselves.

These kinds of problems have been discussed for many years. In his 1933 classic English Journey, J B Priestley noted that many of the deprived areas he visited had no hope of ever re-establishing mass industrial employment, and he suggested that government action was needed to re-organise the populations of such places for productive work. “Managed decline” of defunct pit villages was tried in the Durham coalfields in the sixties and seventies, and it caused enormous bitterness. Any government that embarked on a conscious policy to allow certain settlements to die a natural death would need to consider how to do so without unduly risking the health, livelihood and safety of the remaining inhabitants. It might be necessary to compensate those unable to sell property.

However, this would be matched by potential benefits to the country as a whole. All other things being equal, more economically active people moving to the most prosperous and dynamic areas of the country would benefit economic growth. There was enormous internal migration to London in the interwar period, and the government’s announcement of a huge expansion plan for Cambridge will deliver enormous benefits, if it actually happens (and I appreciate this is a big “if”).

None of this is straightforward. A deliberate decision to stop trying to sustain certain towns and villages would carry risks as well as opportunities. The idea is already complicated by the remote working revolution, which has probably given a new lease of life to certain provincial places with lower housing costs and quality of life advantages over big cities. At a time when the good ship Albion is making very poor headway and carrying a lot of water, though, we need all available ideas for getting more men to the boilers and pumps.