Member Article

Is the North/South debate full of empty promises to quell political unease?

As May’s General Election draws ever closer, the age-old topic of the North/South divide has emerged at the top the political agenda. Economic distribution has become even more prominent following last year’s Scottish referendum for independence, along with the rising fame of the UK Independence Party (UKIP); a party of former City bankers and blue-collar workers that, bizarrely, appeals greatly to the typical Northern working class.

The Conservative-Lib Dem coalition government has maintained great focus upon the geographical distribution of wealth, with plans for a Northern Powerhouse high on the agenda for May’s election. The Labour Party is struggling to keep its decade-long stronghold on the North, as the subjects of immigration and public sector cuts are hotly debated by outside parties such as UKIP and the Green Party.

The North/South divide is reflected not only in economic distribution, but also that of population, with London housing four times more people than the North East, almost twice Yorkshire and one million more than the North West. In terms of government spending, The Guardian recently revealed the infrastructure budget for London is 24-times that of the North East,10-times that of Yorkshire and 4-times that of the North West.

These figures are directly proportional to employment; across the country the number of young people on the dole for more than a year has gone up by 25 per cent since the last election. However, North of England, that figure is 62 per cent. Thus demonstrating that only significant investment will rehabilitate the struggling regions.

PM David Cameron is poised to relaunch his party’s Northern Powerhouse initiative, which promises to connect northern cities, particularly Manchester and Liverpool, to a strong, economic network. This goes hand-in-hand with the Conservative party’s plans to build a high speed rail connection between the City and the northern regions. However in the build up to the 2010 General Election, the Tories neglected to mention the North at all in their manifesto with the ‘North East’ itself being mentioned just once in reference to its hopes for high speed rail.

In the same election, the Lib Dems hoped to invest up to £400 million in refurbishing shipyards in the North of England with no extensive research carried out into the long term future of the North East or the redistribution of wealth.

For the first time, the Northern vote has become key to party success. As many safe-seats are threatened by outside parties and hot topics such as immigration come to the forefront of political debate, we’ll just have to hope that this promise for increased government spending is not simply an empty one and this attention drawn to the North will outlive the election debates.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .