Andrew Vine: Budget for a powerhouse and stop mocking North

AS an indication of how the North is viewed by many in London's business '¨and political communities, the patronising smirk on the senior executive's face could hardly have been more eloquent.
Leeds city centre - is the Government paying 'lip service' to the North?Leeds city centre - is the Government paying 'lip service' to the North?
Leeds city centre - is the Government paying 'lip service' to the North?

He’s a big hitter at a multi-national company, more familiar with the United States or China than anywhere north of the Watford Gap, but we’d met when he had ventured into this strange and distant land called Yorkshire.

And how its ambitions amused him.

Northern Powerhouse? Smirk.

Fair deal on funding? Wider smirk.

International potential? Laughter.

He’s a formidably intelligent man, but he simply didn’t get it about the North losing out to the South, nor the need for the relationship to be rebalanced for the good of the whole country.

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For him, there was no case for the Government to address the North-South divide. It was simply the survival of the fittest, and that meant the affluent South East.

Lucrative contracts from Whitehall go a long way towards paying for his gleaming glass-and-steel office block, and since so much of that spending is concentrated in and around London, the rest of the country doesn’t matter.

There will be many more who take the same view in the capital’s boardrooms.

An encounter last year with a senior civil servant convinced me that the same ingrained bias against the North abides in parts of Government too.

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The same smirk at the idea that we’re simply not getting a fair deal, and the same barely suppressed amusement at our belief we can be international players if given the chance.

That’s what we’re up against in Yorkshire as we strive for a better economy and improved prospects for the young – an attitude of mind, as much as a squeeze on spending.

Decades of under-investment in the North, whilst money has been thrown at London and the Home Counties, have been the result of this mindset.

It is a blinkered metropolitanism amongst too many of those who hold the purse-strings, whether elected politicians or well-paid officials, and so deep-seated that it long ago worked its way into the thinking of business as well.

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So I’m not holding my breath for any earth-shaking announcements from George Osborne in tomorrow’s Budget that bring the Northern Powerhouse any closer to becoming a reality.

The Chancellor has been generous with warm words about the concept since he announced it two years ago – smoothly appropriating an idea born and developed in Yorkshire over the course of the preceding decade – but miserly with the funds to make it happen.

The plans to make our creaking transport system fit for the 21st century cannot be any more than ambitions until the money is provided.

Nor can the great cities of the North effectively join forces and realise their combined economic potential without the financial kick-start so long fought for.

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Despite Mr Osborne’s apparent sincerity in his enthusiasm for the Northern Powerhouse – his constituency, after all, is in the North, albeit in one of its wealthiest pockets – two years of words without cash to back them up is too long.

If anyone were to doubt that this is indicative of Yorkshire and the North being victims of an institutional attitude of mind amongst the establishment of the South East that we deserve second-best, they need only look to London and its commuter belt. Whilst London preens and names its new Crossrail system the Elizabeth Line, Yorkshire passengers remain jammed cheek-by-armpit aboard teeth-rattling Pacer trains.

Residents of Leeds, York and the Calder Valley are still counting the cost of the devastating Christmas floods, whilst those of the Thames Valley are dry and safe, because they got funding for defences and we didn’t.

And there could not be any more glaring example of a London-centric attitude of mind embedded in those who run the machinery of Government than the relocation of Civil Service jobs from Sheffield to the capital.

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Mr Osborne has already laid the ground for another disappointment over Northern Powerhouse funding with his warning that a further squeeze on spending is going to be needed.

Nor is it cynical to point out that the current weakness and disarray of Labour, which overwhelmingly holds the urban constituencies that could benefit from the Northern Powerhouse, means he is under far less pressure than if the Opposition were strong and unified.

Maybe the Chancellor will surprise us and find the funds to really get the Northern Powerhouse moving, or divide the available money more equitably between us and the South East.

I doubt it, though. Another year of waiting – and frustration – beckons.

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But there is something he can do which won’t cost a penny. And that’s to start wiping the smiles off the faces of his officials and those who have grown wealthy on the back of Government largesse, for our ambitions should not be mocked, but applauded and supported.

By resolving to start changing the attitude of mind that the North is another, and less deserving country, he’d be doing us and the whole of Britain a favour.