Plans to create a “northern powerhouse” in England were criticised as running out of steam, while a pledge to level up was also dismissed as meaningless.
Now the political leaders of England’s northern regions have come up with new branding designed to boost the condition and profile of their beloved part of the map – welcome to the “Great North”.
The new campaign – aimed at replacing dismissive cliches surrounding the region as being grim and dilapidated with a self-confident boast about its strengths – is designed to tap into the success of the Great North Run, which is in its 43rd year and takes place on Sunday.
The rebrand emerged as the northern leaders met this weekend to discuss how to move on from the misfiring programmes of the past.
While most of them accept that former chancellor George Osborne had been sincere in his attempts to boost Greater Manchester with his northern powerhouse schemes, they are angry that Boris Johnson’s promise to level up the north in the wake of the 2019 election was not prioritised.
“That long-standing image of the north as left behind, as grim – all of those tropes that are used when people talk about the north in the round or sometimes when we’re depicted – it’s very clearly not true,” said Kim McGuinness, the Labour north-east mayor, speaking to the Observer.
“Anybody who’s ever been to and done the Great North Run, for example, will tell a very different story of what we are as the north.
“There have been many good intentions around the creation of the northern powerhouse, but it was very much a thing handed to the north by the centre. If I went out in the street in the north-east and said: ‘How do you think levelling up has gone?’, I think people would roll their eyes.
“What we want to talk about is how we build a bottom-up brand that is all about the people of the north, for the people, by the people – under that really famous banner, the Great North.”
McGuinness pointed to recent reports showing the persistent north-south divide in concerns such as health and wealth. A study by the Institute for Public Policy Research thinktank found that despite levelling up pledges, current trends suggested London and the south-east will continue to outstrip the rest of the nation across a series of issues.
The northern mayors are increasingly powerful, with two meetings taking place among them in the last week. Mayors including McGuinness, Andy Burnham, Tracy Brabin, Ben Houchen, David Skaith, Oliver Coppard and Steve Rotheram all met on Saturday to discuss the Great North concept, with Sir Brendan Foster, founder of the Great North Run, also in attendance.
The plan comes with northern leaders warning Labour that they will not hesitate to confront the new government should it fail to deliver the powers and financial freedoms they believe are necessary to finally provide the upgrades their areas need.
They are most keenly pushing to ensure that new financial freedoms – known as single settlements – are delivered in this autumn’s spending review.
“If we end up in a position of challenge, of course we’re going to do that,” said McGuinness. “But I’m really hoping that’s not where we’re going.
“As for the next few months, what we really want to see is more of that local control – this single settlement – working in the same way as a department would work.
“That’s what we want – to have much more control over the way that we’re able to invest in our own regions, so that people can feel it on the ground. If people don’t feel the difference, there’s no point at all.”
McGuinness and the others are also emerging as key players in the drive to reduce child poverty, made more difficult by the government’s refusal to end the two-child limit on benefit payments. She has launched her own child poverty reduction unit.
McGuinness said it was “deeply frustrating” that the policy remained in place, but said that she believed the government was also frustrated that the economic climate meant that it could not be immediately removed.
