Jayne Dowle: Living proof of the wealth divide that pits London against rest of Britain

It was thronged with people, people milling in and out of shops, people waiting to cross the road, people spending money. I swear I have never seen so many people shopping in one place.

There was only one question to ask: “What recession?”

Actually, make that two. It was closely followed by “austerity Britain – where’s that then?”

Judging by the armfuls of carrier bags this lot were laden down with, it was some other place they hadn’t found on the map.

Granted, there were plenty of tourists among the crowds, but this underlines a key point.

One of the reasons why London is different to the rest of the country is because it still attracts millions of overseas visitors a year, who bring their money with them.

And even if their disposable cash is limited, if they are coming to Great Britain, it will be to London they head to as a priority. We can shout all we like about the undoubted attractions we have up here, but if they have limited time and limited spend, they simply won’t make it out of Zone 1.

I have never doubted the existence of the North-South divide. In fact, with 14 years living in the capital behind me, a sister in Kent and a set of in-laws in Surrey, I reckon I know as much about it as any Northerner.

But it is as wrong to lump “the South” together as it is to assume that “the North” is the same place whether you are in Rotherham or Richmond.

Find yourself in some challenged part of Kent, such as Chatham, where traditional maritime industries declined years ago, and new investors are as rare as a smile behind a shop-counter, and if you look along the high street, with its boarded-up buildings and discount stores, it’s not that much different from plenty of places in Yorkshire.

Except that by and large, they trusted the Tories not to let them down, they don’t comprehend the humour of Peter Kay and think that The Only Way is Essex is the funniest thing they have ever seen on television. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that.

Anyway, my point is this. What we are experiencing is not so much a North-South divide as a “London and the rest of the country” divide. Wealth filters out across the South East from the City, but only so far.

New research from the accountancy firm PriceWaterhouseCoopers compounds this. It finds that while London enjoyed the strongest earnings growth, the steadiest house prices and one of the lowest increases in personal insolvencies over the past year, it is a different picture in the regions, and guess what, especially the North and the West Midlands.

Cuts in public spending and subsequent job losses have impacted much more strongly on consumer spending in these areas. Recent news from Boots the Chemist echoes this, pinpointing North Yorkshire, Wales and Northern Ireland as among its weakest trading areas, where its £1 discount deals are the most popular. And then of course, you can factor in other things, such as the level of household savings, and house prices – mortgage provider ING Direct found out the other week that at £95,800, the average cost of a car-parking space in Kensington and Chelsea is £13,500 more expensive than the average price of a house in Middlesbrough – and it is not so much a state of mind as hard economic evidence.

So if you were David Cameron, or any one of his Ministers, zooming around London in the back of a chauffeur-driven car, would you look out of the window and worry?

Well, on the evidence I saw on Oxford Street the other weekend, I wouldn’t especially. I would find it very easy to put my hands over my ears to the clamour of voices and close my eyes to the raft of statistics and convince myself that while ever the Christmas lights twinkle over the busy shoppers of central London nothing much can be wrong in the world.

I have not been especially generous this festive season, but I guess I might spare just a little thought for them. I am not uncharitable. I know they are doing a tough job in very tough circumstances, and as a country, we have to get our finances in order. But I don’t understand how Prime Minister David Cameron and his Cabinet colleagues can live and work in London, as they do, and comprehend the full meaning of the phrase “we’re all in this together”.

For the few days I spent there, I even managed to convince myself that perhaps I had been wrong to be so pessimistic. But then I came back home to Barnsley, and found that the biggest news in the town centre was the opening of a Pound Shop.

It is so popular it has to have security guards on the door. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions from that one too.