Why the north-south divide will only get wider under Boris Johnson

The present gang in Downing Street may wish to level things up economically and socially for their friends in the north, but, as Andy Burnham discovered, in terms of political power they are determined to try to level them firmly down. Sean O’Grady explains

The prime minister on a visit to County Durham following the Conservatives’ election win in December 2019 (Getty)

Last December, after a remarkable win in an extraordinary general election, Boris Johnson travelled to Sedgefield in County Durham. A former mining area, it was a symbolic location, long a safe Labour seat that Tony Blair once represented with a majority of 25,000, or 53 per cent of the vote. His successor, Phil Wilson was defeated by a Tory, Paul Howell on a 13 per cent swing for a Conservative majority of 4,500. It had been held by Labour since 1935. It was one of many such seats in the broad north and parts of the Midlands that made a historic switch, responding to Brexit and the pledge to “level up” left-behind towns. The red wall had famously turned blue.

Johnson declared: “I want to thank all the people of those incredible constituencies. I want to thank all of you for the trust you have placed in the Conservative Party and in me, and I know how difficult it was to make that decision. I want the people of the northeast to know that we in the Conservative Party, and I, will repay your trust. Everything I do as your prime minister will be devoted to repaying that trust.”

As the saying goes, how’s that coming along, Boris?

As the government prepares to close down much of the economy in the north and Midlands, and is in open conflict with so many local leaders, the answer has to be not so very well. Getting Brexit “done” is proving rather more problematic, whoever it is to blame. There are still many manufacturing areas – and jobs – in the north and Midlands which rely on EU markets and supply chains that would be hit hard by a no-deal Brexit, even if some citizens there consciously voted for such an outcome. The “shovel ready” infrastructure projects, let alone more distant ones such as HS2 are yet to make much impact. Meanwhile the north suffers disproportionately from the Covid restrictions and many agree with Andy Burnham that they are being unfairly treated. 

To be fair, the government is making more amicable progress in other areas. Whether bullied or not, Lancashire and Liverpool did come to financial terms, as the Sheffield City Region of South Yorkshire is doing. West Yorkshire, the authorities in the northeast and Nottingham may or may not. In any case the rows about money, business failures and return to mass unemployment as the main furlough scheme closes down don’t feel like “levelling up”.  

Politically, figures such as Burnham and Lisa Nandy, shadow foreign secretary and MP for Wigan, compare the poisonous atmosphere to the 1980s. The Thatcher era is associated with neglect of the north and a marked intensification of the north-south divide. Some in government at that time advocated allowing decaying cities such as Liverpool to fade away in managed decline (though riots and the efforts of Michael Heseltine corrected some of that). The brutal miners’ strike of 1984-85, cuts in benefits and public services and a cycle of deprivation and decline made the north a grimly depressing place. It was little wonder that the Thatcher-Major years saw the Conservatives’ last representation in great cities such as Sheffield, Manchester, Bradford and Leeds disappear. There was huge mutual resentment. Harry Enfield’s brash comedy character Loadsamoney, an archetypal Essex man builder, had his counterpoint in the Geordie Buggerallmoney. A magazine columnist named Boris Johnson complained about Liverpool’s victim complex.  

A later generation of Tory leaders sought to change all that. George Osborne, representing a wealthy Cheshire seat, developed policies such as the Northern Powerhouse with its ambitious plans for much needed rail links across the region and to the south. To complement his new economic model he encouraged northern and Midlands municipalities to federate into larger regional groups with metro mayors, who’d enjoy more powers, a little more control over central government spending and a far higher political profile than the traditional borough council leaders. In doing so the Cameron government hugely extended the New Labour idea of directly elected mayors (pioneered in London by the return of Ken Livingstone). They also brought back the notion of regional government that the Heath government institutionalised in its 1974 local government reorganisation, with mega authorities in Strathclyde, West and South Yorkshire, Merseyside and elsewhere, governing many millions of people each. 

Such gigantism became unpopular in the Tory party when these councils, like the longer established Greater London Council, became bywords for waste and “loony left” hobbyhorses. They often defied the Thatcher government by radically subsiding public transport, sponsoring schemes to help racial and sexual minority groups, and refusing to increase their rates. By 1989 Thatcher had abolished the lot of them, and significant centres of Labour political power with them.  

By the 2010s, though, the compassionate Toryism of Cameron and Osborne wanted to reverse that flinty Tory approach, with some modest success. Labour splits, complacency and neglect also helped the Conservatives begin to stage a revival, but it was Brexit and Ukip that broke traditional tribal voting habits. It was this opportunity that Johnson himself helped to create and then exploit, layering on top of Osborne’s schemes the vague “levelling up” pledge. Whereas Thatcher wanted market forces to rebuild the north’s economy, which was at least logically coherent, Johnson’s agenda is more diffuse, and seems to depend on a lot of public spending and investment in grand schemes. It was no accident that his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, came from County Durham (albeit far from working class). Jeremy Corbyn’s supposedly remote metropolitan elite, woke “north London” obsessions didn’t help Labour connect with its older electorate, and not did the confusions over Brexit.  

The irony now is that it is that very northern strategy, and the creation by Cameron and Osborne of the directly elected metro mayors, that is causing this Tory government so many headaches. To an extent, Cameron and Osborne were the political parents of Burnham, the newly crowned king of the north, and all that has passed in the last momentous week. They now also have the potentially troublesome Northern Research Group of northern Conservative MPs to contend with as a powerful pressure group, a parliamentary grouping large enough to inflict defeats in the Commons. Although their leader, Jake Berry, is a former minister who’s been around for a few years many new Tory representatives are fresh into politics, and have not yet been fully house-trained into the notes of a party long dominated by southern counties and suburbs and, indeed, a Tory metropolitan elite based in Islington, Notting Hill and various other expensive districts of the capital. Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 committee of backbenchers, happens to be MP for Trafford, adding his own voice and influence to the regional awkward squad.

Johnson, Cummings and the rest of the coterie in No 10 may well still be committed to the economic revival of the north, to the “levelling up” agenda and the aspirations of the northern working classes. They are much less inclined to like the north’s metro mayors such as Burnham and their constant calls for more devolution, more power and more money. It was, after all, a little-known figure called Dominic Cummings who masterminded the successful “No” campaign in the referendum on setting up a northeast England elected assembly, back in 2004 (an experience that was to prove useful when the EU referendum came around). Cummings thus killed stone dead John Prescott’s plans for a nascent federalised England of regional governments. The present gang in Downing Street may wish to level things up economically and socially for their friends in the north, but, as Burnham discovered, in terms of political power they are determined to try and level them, and indeed the devolved governments in Scotland and Wales, firmly down through all the centripetal force Whitehall and Westminster have at their disposal.