The Equality Trust reports that Britain has one of the most unequal divides in the world. There’s nothing wrong with people in the South working hard and reaping the rewards, but the differences are stark. The average median household wealth in the southeast is twice that of the north (half a million pounds or so, mostly locked up in property).
The average disposable income of around £30k is unheard of to around 20% of people in the UK, where incomes have actually fallen for the poorest 14 million people. This is often due to ‘trickledown economics’ which is supposed to create jobs and produce wealth. But economist John Kenneth Galbraith said this theory ends up with ‘If you feed enough oats to the horse, some will pass through to feed the sparrows’. 20% of people in the UK have an average disposable income of around £13K (with rising prices, even nurses are going to food banks with strict criteria – you can’t just roll in and help yourself to free food).
Devolving power is good, but only when it doesn’t get over-complicated. We have this at local level (with district and county and parish councils all doing different things). And in Wales and Scotland and city councils, they have power to do some things and not others. Some have proposed citing Parliament elsewhere, and of course we all wonder why (unlike other professions), MPs can’t just work virtually, instead of wasting taxpayer money to have two homes, so they can travel first-class by train each week to shout at each other in the Houses of Parliament.
A note also to those who are obsessed with the issue of ‘people on boats’ coming to England illegally. Most are victims of people traffickers, and have no choice where they land. And the reason the smugglers use Britain over France, is because the latter has strict employment rules. An immigrant could not get an ‘underground job’ being paid slave wages for long hours, like here. If we had proper protection for the poorest-paid workers, we would not be ‘first port of call’ for the people-smuggling industry. So the very MPs that call out against the immigrants, are actually encouraging those who exploit them.
the Hillsborough disaster proved the divide
A good proof of the north-south divide is the Hillsborough disaster, where 97 people died (including one who died 32 years later of brain injury) with many more injured, at a football stadium. Bad enough, but the mass media then insulted the living and dead, by suggesting the event had been caused by ‘drunk football hooligans’, when it had already been established that lack of proper crowd control was the reason.
The Sun newspaper suggested that some fans had pickpocketed victims (or even urinated on them), something later retracted (to this day, people in Liverpool boycott the newspaper). German football manager Jürgen Klopp gained the affection of local fans in a press conference, where he politely but firmly refused to answer a question from a Sun journalist. He said nothing outright, but suggested his place of employment was the reason. Even Everton fans said it was ‘impossible to dislike him’.
And while editor of The Spectator, former Prime Minister Boris Johnson approved an article again that suggested ‘drunken fans’ were partly responsible for the disaster. His subsequent apology was rejected by Margaret Aspinall (chair of the Hillsborough Families Support Group – her son died age 18 in the tragedy):
What he has got to understand is that we were speaking the truth for 23 years. It’s too little, too late. It’s fine to apologise afterwards. No, his apology doesn’t mean a thing to me.
would Single Transferable vote help things?
Likely, yes. Electoral Reform Society is used in Ireland. The argument given for first-past-the-post is that it maintains strong constituency links (a bit of a nonsense considering many MPs are ‘flown in’ to fight seats and neither live nor spend much time in towns where elected). Unlike most PR systems, STV maintains strong constituency links, which is also good (especially of late) to reduce the risk of extremist MPs being elected.
a rallying call for a more equal Britain
No matter what your politics, nobody could have failed to been impressed during the pandemic, when Manchester mayor Andy Burnham stood on the steps (in his parka and glasses, looking like a pop star from Oasis) rallying the country to get behind him, as the North got far less in money than the South, when local people could not afford to eat.
In Head North he and another Mayor offer a 10-point plan to equal up, which has not happened. The promise of HS2 (which will kill lots of wildlife anyway and do nothing to stop climate change) shows how out-of-touch parliament is. Rather than ferrying rich businessmen to meetings, the money would be better spent on upgrading rolling stock and providing better rail and bus services nationwide.
This book is about getting out of the Westminster bubble, to create a society where rich Tory MPs don’t say that going to food banks is due to ‘bad budgeting’ etc. It includes timely discussions on Northern voices and culture, and looks at the failed promises of ‘levelling up’ from successive Prime Ministers.
It’s not a ‘Labour book’, just a read for anyone who cares about treating our society as a whole, rather than a divided nation where one part gets all the cookies, and the other gets the crumbs. No doubt some privately-educated MPs do care for the poor, we have seen what has happened in recent years when at one point virtually the whole Cabinet seemed to consist of old Etonians, who saw ‘ruling the country’ as their birthright, with no respect for the fact that they were neither competent or qualified to do so.
A moving and fascinating look behind the scenes of our political system; the important story of two MPs from working class backgrounds, who set out to change lives and do the right thing. Kwajo Tweneboa (Social Housing activist)
Two of the very few MPs who are genuinely concerned about the welfare of their constituents, have a basic decency, strong principles and a genuine humanity. John Green, Morning Star
Authors Andy Burnham and Steve Rotherham (who was at Hillsborough, see below) have been mayors for Greater Manchester and Liverpool City since 2017. Both were previously MPs in the Houses of Parliament.
do southern politicians really neglect northerners?
The Bubble has an interesting post on this, and the answer appears to be ‘yes’. Of course the Tories closed the mines (good for the planet but no infrastructure was put in place to replace jobs) and although thankfully HS2 (which will have catastrophic effects on wildlife is now partly cancelled, the original idea was to ‘link the south to the north’, when the colossal waste of funds could have been used to upgrade our public transport system. This video of the Prime Minister shows him boasting about taking money from ‘deprived urban areas’ to affluent areas like Tunbridge Wells. Enough said.
If you compare transport in the North and London, you may as well think two different countries. Back in the 80s, Margaret Thatcher decided to break up bus companies everywhere across England, except London. We have had 35 years of rising fares, routes being cut, falling passenger numbers, barely any night buses and no Oyster system. Andy Burnham (Mayor of Manchester)
