Ahead of the Labour party conference in Manchester, Michael Dugher, Labour MP for Barnsley East and shadow minister without portfolio, argues that David Cameron and his policies are all at sea in northern England.
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David Cameron at Barnsley College. The north is looking like an electoral wilderness for his party. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/PA
Last week saw the news that David Cameron has allowed the appointment of Dr Tim Leunig as a new senior adviser to the education secretary, Michael Gove. Leunig was dubbed the "barmy boffin" when he co-authored a 2008 report that suggested giving up on regeneration attempts in 'failing cities' like Liverpool, Bradford, Sunderland and Hull (which he said were "beyond revival"), and switching investment programmes to booming parts of the south of England instead.
But the sense that senior people in this government have a hostility to the north of England built into their political DNA is by no means new. You may recall that in late 2010 the most senior Conservative politician in local government, Councillor David Shakespeare OBE, was caught telling colleagues at the Local Government Association that the way to deal with rising unemployment in the north was for out-of-work northerners to "replace the Romanians" by being put to work picking fruit in the "cherry orchards" of the south.
Comments like these are more than just out of touch gaffes. They speak to a genuine ignorance about the north of England inside the Conservative party. I remember chatting to a Tory MP before the election who admitted that he'd never visited the north "except for the occasional Conservative party conference in Blackpool". That MP is now a senior minister. The truth is that David Cameron, and many inside his Government, just don't get the north - and when you look at their policies, and what is happening in large parts of the north, it shows.
Cameron said that we were "all in this together", but the truth is how much you are "in it" depends greatly on where you happen to live. Long-term youth unemployment, for example, is a major problem across the whole of the country, but it is now at crisis levels in the north. The number of young people who have been claiming jobseekers' allowance for more than twelve months in the south east has increased by 135% in the last two years. But this figure is 193% for the north west, 208% for Yorkshire and the Humber and 598% for the north east.
In my own patch in Barnsley, the unemployment rate is now almost 3% higher than the national average. This means that 32,000 jobs are needed in the borough just to reach the national average for unemployment.
At the same time, the government's ongoing cuts are falling harder on poorer areas, leaving towns like my own struggling not to fall further behind. It is true that all local authorities are facing cuts of seven per cent a year over the next few years, but councils in poorer areas are disproportionally hit as their revenue from council tax is less and they are inevitably more reliant on central government funding.
This is not the worst of it. Starting in 2013, the government plans to 're-localise' business rates, meaning that councils will get to keep the money they receive from local businesses within their area. This little-reported change will have a big impact, undoubtedly resulting in an increased gap in wealth between rich and poor councils due to the amount raised via business rates varying so widely from council to council. Put simply, those that already have many thriving, prosperous businesses will be able to raise more and invest it back to further grow their local economies. For those that are already struggling, things will get worse. The outcome will be further strain on less affluent councils, particularly in those metropolitan areas outside London and the south east. This will also further reduce the ability of less well-off councils - who of course have higher needs - to deliver vital local public services.
The government has also proposed increasing local and regional differentiation in public sector pay. This would mean teachers, nurses and other public sector employees who live in less prosperous parts of the UK being paid less than colleagues doing the same job in wealthier areas. This would exacerbate the north-south divide. As well as the obvious unfairness, at a time when the economy is suffering a crisis of demand, taking more money out of regional economies that are already suffering the worst effects of the double-dip recession would be utterly self-defeating.
All of this exacerbates the broader inequalities that exist in our country. The TUC has said that life expectancy in deprived areas of the UK is increasing at half the pace of the wealthiest parts of London and the south of England. This means that people living in areas like Manchester, where delegates gather for this year's Labour party conference this weekend, can expect their retirement to be a lot shorter than those from more affluent parts of the UK.
The latest NHS local health profiles show the full extent of the divide and the challenges ahead. In Manchester, for example, the percentage of children aged under 16 years old living in poverty is 40%, whereas this figures is 11% in Surrey.
Margaret Thatcher's cuts have not been forgotten in the north. Photograph: Dave M. Benett/Getty So if the north is suffering under the Conservative-led government, little wonder that the Tories (and the Lib Dems) have done so badly in recent local elections in up here. Conservative strategists are right to be worried. Cameron's failure to win a majority at the last election can be put down, at least in part, to his failure to convince large parts of Britain, especially outside the south of England, that his was a changed Conservative party. Too many people remember the dark days of the 1980s when large parts of the country, especially in the north, were forced into rapid decline. And come the next election, the north will remain a key region for Labour. For example, Stockton South, Lancaster and Fleetwood, Morecambe and Lunesdale, Carlisle, Weaver Vale, Blackpool North and Cleveleys, Bury North, Chester, Warrington South, Dewsbury and Pudsey can all be won with a swing to Labour from the Tories of less than 6%.
This summer, the Olympics and the Paralympics were a celebration of all that is good about United Kingdom. They brought people together from across every part of the country. Far from being simply the 'London Games', there was a sense that our achievements were felt in every corner of the UK. In Yorkshire, with our typical immodesty, it was humbly pointed out that if Yorkshire was a country, we would have finished 12th in the medals table, coming ahead of the likes of the Netherlands, Spain and Brazil.
As delegates gather this week in one of our great northern cities, Manchester, for the Labour party conference, you are going to hear a lot more from Labour about reaching out to every part of the United Kingdom. It will be central to Ed Miliband's pitch to the country this week. The truth is that joblessness and economic decline in parts of the north of England not only damage our economy as a whole, but also offend the values that we have as a country - whether we live in Barnsley, Birmingham or Buckinghamshire. The contrast between David Cameron's divide-and-rule approach could not be greater.