A lack of mention of levelling up from Liz Truss does not spell good news for the North - Lisa Nandy

In fact, commitments to match investment and funding in less prosperous parts of the country were entirely absent during her campaign.

This does not spell good news for the north.

Since the Tories promised to level up the country, regional inequalities have widened. The gap in public spending between north and south has grown, Northern Powerhouse Rail was cancelled, promised investment in buses was halved and during the pandemic the north was told to make do on 80 per cent of the furlough scheme provided to London.

The impact of this dismal record is already shockingly clear. This year’s A-level results revealed stark and growing regional inequalities. The promises made to voters in the north that we would no longer be written off have been repeatedly exposed as an outright lie.

But with inflation rises hitting parts of the north hardest, it beggars belief that now we have a Prime Minister who has set her face against the windfall tax on oil and gas profits Labour is proposing when families are facing eye-watering energy bill rises in just over a month’s time. A windfall tax would allow us to cap energy price rises. By rejecting this out of hand, Truss is making a deliberate choice to protect the profits of big oil and gas producers over help to families who are struggling now.

With businesses struggling, it is madness to prioritise tax cuts to protect the profits of big corporations through cuts to corporation tax as Truss plans to do, instead of helping small businesses with rates relief, as Labour is proposing.

These are ideological choices but what is even more troubling is the views that lie behind them.

During her leadership campaign, Liz Truss got into trouble for her suggestion that nurses, teachers and public sector workers were worth less in the north than the south.

She has form on this. Recently comments emerged where she argued Britain’s low productivity was the result of lazy British workers who needed to show more ‘graft’.

“If you look at productivity, it’s very, very different in London from the rest of the country,” she said. “It’s partly a mindset and attitude thing, I think. It’s working culture, basically.”

Comments like this, and her promises to govern like Thatcher, will do nothing to dispel that anxiety for the north of England.

The tragedy of this is that Truss accepts that growth is the only way out of this low growth, high tax spiral the Tories have landed us in, and we cannot grow the economy when we write off the contribution, assets and potential of most people and most places.

Britain is unique in trying to power our economy using only a handful of people in a handful of sectors in a small corner of the country. Economists have likened it to trying to fly a jet using only one engine.

This is what levelling up was meant to solve. It isn’t a local or even regional problem – it’s at the heart of our national crisis.

Tragically it seems Conservative Party members have just given us a Prime Minister who doesn’t see this, who seems to have no real grasp of the scale of the crisis confronting us and is ideologically opposed to seizing the only route out – to make good on the promises of her predecessor and get Britain working again.

If Labour were in power, our top priority would be getting money back into people’s pockets, by freezing energy bills.

We would also insulate millions more homes through our Warm Homes Plan, to reduce the amount of energy we need and save more money off bills – just not this year, but every year into the future.

And we would invest. The next Labour government will invest £28bn a year every year for a decade to create the clean energy jobs that will help us meet the climate challenge, get money back into people’s pockets and rebuild local economies. The road to net zero is paved with a million jobs and we will invest to bring to them to towns across Britain.

Our coastal and industrial towns stand to benefit the most from this investment. Places that within living memory powered the country and built our wealth and influence, can do so again.

Giving people and places the support and backing to do that will be the defining mission of the next Labour government.

For decades, people across the North have listened to Conservative Prime Ministers make – and then break – big promises.

Boris Johnson told us he was going to level up. But the reality was all too familiar – investment in a few areas in the South East, and managed decline for the rest of us.

Now his successor won’t even go so far as to say the words ‘levelling up’ on the day she is anointed as the new Prime Minister.

Britain needs and deserves better, but tragically it doesn’t seem that we are about to get it.