Brexit and the North

I am a remainer. I live in London although when I was younger I spent some years in Manchester – a place I liked as it helped me grow into adulthood.

I have been reading a book called, ‘the Northern Question’ by Tom Hazeldine which describes the relations between the City and the Southern counties and the northern industrial areas. His is a left wing view. I was struck by how close the actions and strategies of the Tory and Labour parties in dealing with the North in the 20th century. There was a sense of continuity whatever party was in power. It seems that Labour was Tory light, especially the Blair era. Hazeldine quotes Margaret Thatcher’s comment that New Labour was her biggest achievement.

The callousness of successive governments towards the North was breathtaking, not only did administrations destroy industrial jobs but they did not help the region develop and bring in modern industries to provide employment, as happened in other parts of Europe. They preferred to enable the City to invest in companies operating in Europe and further afield. The notion of ‘levelling up’ promoted by May and then Johnson, presupposes the dismantling of the power of the City and hegemony of the South. That was never going to happen.

I cheered when I read about the Northern Region’s Leave vote in the referendum in the book – I surprised myself. I remember commenting to a friend how surprised I was at Brexit and he replied that he wasn’t as he had a brother living in Knowsley. He replied: ‘There is nothing there – no hope for a better future.’ But now I think those leavers in the North were right. What else could they do to get the attention of the political classes who have so ignored them for decades?

And Brexit has achieved a lot politically. Most notably it has fractured the conservative party and brought some uneasiness to the South. The City is unhappy. Wealth in the South is evaporating. ‘Levelling up’ is a belated recognition of the harms done to our friends in the North, but remains a rather empty promise. Brexit is acting as a mechanism of ‘levelling down’ in the South.

Perhaps the Conservative party members choice of an ideologue as the new Prime Minister is an outcome of that uneasiness, hoping that she will bring us back to the old certainties. Does the recent Labour party performance at their annual conference encourage us to believe a break with the past regarding the North? It seems to me that Starmer’s party is simply a continuation Blairite party. Disciplined but essentially conservative. A new Labour administration would not necessarily be good news for the North. The focus on economics is understandable but it does play into the City’s hands.