Why Kelvin MacKenzie should be grateful for the North

Kelvin MacKenzie has further endeared himself to Northerners, by calling for the launch of a Southern Party. (Terri Pengilley)

Already wildly popular in the North of England after his treatment of victims of the Hillsborough disaster, the former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie endeared himself to all of us born or living north of Watford by using a column in The Daily Telegraph to call for the launch of a Southern Party.

MacKenzie's party would exist to protect the wealth of the south-east. As Kelvin put it: "Why should the good people of Guildford have to fund the unhealthy habits of Glasgow?" MacKenzie's proposal was written on the same day as news that the south-east had largely avoided the worst of the recession. Nice one, pal.

MacKenzie wilfully forgets that many of the features that draw people to London were built on the sweat of non-Londoners in the Industrial Revolution and beyond.

And many of the "hard-working, clever and creative" (his words) people who live in London were educated in the North. They're presumably quite happy that the city which creams much of the rest of the country's talent is using its income to remunerate the rest of the country for that brain drain.

A drain that's caused by London's dominance in almost every employment sector. Except the ones destroyed in the Eighties by a government cheered on by... The Sun (editor, K MacKenzie).