A cold realisation is haunting British politics. For at least six years, turbulence and chaos were the default setting of power and politics. Now, the arrival of Rishi Sunak’s comparatively dull brand of Tory technocracy feels like an uneasy pause, allowing us to marvel at the contrast between a long spell of drama and noise, and the country’s everyday reality. Put bluntly, we are back where we ever were, and few aspects of our national condition better illustrate that than the gap between England’s north and south.
Yes, the usual caveats apply: inequality, poverty and decaying public services are problems spread around the whole of the country, and London presents examples as glaring as anywhere else. But the north-south divide remains the most vivid manifestation of the English malaise, and the serial crises we now seem to be locked into are making it much worse. At the same time, however, reducing the north’s condition to hapless misery misses a growing confidence and coherence that the chaos of the past few years only seems to have increased. Although levelling up has largely turned out to be a fantasy, our politics might just be showing signs of being radically changed by northern voices, speaking not just for the places they represent and govern, but the wider region.
