Andy Burnham’s call to abandon “40 years of neoliberalism” rests partly on the damage that he says it has done to northern England. A new study – published in the Lancet this week – adds weight to his argument. It found that for adults aged 25 to 49, death rates in the north were 13% higher than in the south in 1981. By 2024, that gap had more than tripled to 42%. What happened in the four decades that left younger adults in northern England with so much worse chances of survival?
The answer lies in the lives and jobs that people have, and the homes they can afford, as well as the state of the public services, like the NHS, that they rely on. Deindustrialisation stripped secure employment from many communities in the north of England – as it did in Scotland and Wales. Austerity then weakened support systems. These reasons also underscore Mr Burnham’s analysis that Britain’s economic model and concentration of power in London have failed its regions.
