North and South

Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson have a stated aim to ‘level up’ the north and south of England. They have recognised the north/south divide, the former being poorer and the latter being richer. Cummings and Johnson are going to change all that. But isn’t the reality more nuanced than that?

It is a simple economic fact that the south of Britain is wealthier than the north. However, that doesn’t mean that everyone in the south of England is better off than our friends in the north. Far from it. There are some fabulously well-off towns and cities in the north and some very poor areas in the south.

I will not name place names, but I know areas of Bristol, and indeed Bath, that have serious issues around poverty. And I know because I spent large parts of my working life working, one way or another, with the poorest in society. I saw it too in small villages and towns around Bristol. I’ve seen it in supposedly well off places too.

Only last year, I was in Cornwall and what I saw in some places really shocked me. I saw run down, boarded up high streets, people begging on the streets and others living in seriously squalid living conditions. In the south. When we talk about the north and the south, we talk very generally and miss what’s out there in front of our very eyes.

In a former mining town near Bristol, I came across people who had to choose between heating and eating. In another, I worked with a man who lived in a one-bedroomed flat in absolute squalor. In the constituency of multimillionaire Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, I came across some of the poorest people in the land. The divide between north and south is not complete.

I do not see elite, establishment advisors and politicians even acknowledging the simple fact that actually everywhere there are pockets, some very significant pockets, of absolute poverty. You do not need to go north of Birmingham to see that.

So, my question for Dominic Cummings and Boris Johnson is this: what are you going to do to level up the poor of the south with the rich of the south? I totally support levelling up the country but please understand that not everyone in the richest places in the south dines out on caviar and Moët. I am not sure they know but I am pretty sure they don’t care.