The Guardian view on the northern powerhouse: back on

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/aug/23/the-guardian-view-on-the-northern-powerhouse-back-on

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Wed 23 Aug 2017 19.02 BST

Last modified on Mon 27 Nov 2017 18.05 GMT

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Theresa May sped to Teesside on Wednesday afternoon to launch the South Tees Development Corporation, a 25-year regeneration project backed by Ben Houchen, the new Conservative mayor of Tees Valley. It cannot have been coincidence that hours earlier in Leeds there was a gathering of an embryonic northern council of regional politicians and business interests, angered by the government downgrade of the electrification of the Leeds-Manchester line announced last month. Called the northern transport summit, in fact its ambitions were much wider: to coordinate and amplify a regional identity. As Andy Burnham, Greater Manchester’s mayor, said earlier this week, unless the north finds its political voice, “we will be waiting for ever for a powerhouse”.

What had turbocharged the sense of grievance over the delay to the trans-Pennine electrification, and to other out-of-London rail improvements, was the confirmation that came only days later of government backing for Crossrail 2, the £31bn north-south London rail route. Transport for London had been in a standoff over who would pay, with the transport secretary, Chris Grayling, whose disastrous cost-cutting when he was justice secretary has now largely been reversed. The tension over the London-centric investment of scarce infrastructure spending was worsened by the publication of the thinktank IPPR North’s now annual estimate of relative funding between the south-east and the north, which showed that parity funding over the past 10 years would have meant £59bn more in investment for the north. The government angrily disputed the figures, as it does every year, claiming that the IPPR does not take into account infrastructure investment in one region that benefits a much wider area, like the improvements to the A14 linking the Midlands to the East Anglian port of Felixstowe. The IPPR points out that it assigns regional spending according to official Treasury figures.

But this is only partly about the economic impact of a creaking transport network. It is also about the huge opportunity that has been missed in a decade of ultra-low interest rates that a less ideologically bound government would have exploited for renewal: the country could now be reaping the benefits of development like a national 4G network or universal access to high-speed fibre broadband. Instead, by 2022 there will be little – not even substantial inroads into the debt – to show for Tory economic policy. Most importantly, it is about the political possibilities of forging a northern political identity that, as old loyalties dissolve and different alignments emerge, could become politically decisive. That is what is in play, and that may explain why – with Jeremy Corbyn already on the campaign trail – Mrs May headed north at short notice.

The shape of politics in a decade’s time has rarely been quite so uncertain. But if the recent past is any guide at all, the Tories may be on the point of making inroads in the region. Although last June the Tories failed to capitalise as they had hoped on the fall of Ukip, still they won a handful of seats in a region that has broadly been hostile territory for more than a generation. If the English divide between provincial and metropolitan, between the citizens of “somewhere” and the citizens of “nowhere” – as they were so infamously categorised by Mrs May in her first leader’s speech – really becomes entrenched, another election might deliver a dozen or more semi-rural and smalltown northern seats to the Conservatives. Already, 15 of the 50 constituencies the Tories are best placed to win in the UK are in the part of England that stretches from the Humber to the Scottish border.

Earlier this week, George Osborne – the godfather both of austerity and the northern powerhouse – challenged Mrs May to prove her commitment to building an economy that works for the whole country by backing his project. The advice may have been self-interested, but he was right.