John Ledger: Why ‘Powerhouse’ title is nothing new for Yorkshire and the north
This article contains affiliate links. We may earn a small commission on items purchased through this article, but that does not affect our editorial judgement.
Responding to claims by Huddersfield MP Barry Sheerman that southerners are ‘living parasitically’ on the efforts of people from the North, Mr Wharton did little to bridge the North-South divide or foster a spirit of entente cordiale between us and them.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdMr Shearman believes use of the phrase ‘Northern Powerhouse’ is patronising because the North is already a powerhouse, albeit one starved of the levels of investment that continue to pour into the South.
The Northern Powerhouse minister was having none of it, however.
“This Government is recognising the potential that the North has to drive our economy,” said Mr Wharton, who appears to have made it all the way through school and his law degree at Durham University oblivious to the North’s achievement of having driven the British economy for the best part of the last 200 years.
It was here in the North that the spirit of the industrial revolution burned most brightly; it was here, in the pits of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and County Durham that coal was mined to fuel victory in two World Wars; and it is here in the North, beneath our very feet, that a valuable and critically important fuel source has been abandoned by politicians who lack the collective backbone to see sense.
Advertisement
Hide AdAdvertisement
Hide AdIt is here in the North that some of the country’s most successful manufacturing companies continue to trade; and here in the North that world leading research and development projects take place. And all without the infrastructure enjoyed by many regions in the south.
The Northern Powerhouse is not a new political construct, it is a long-standing phenomenon born of the labour, the enterprise, the inventiveness and the dogged determination of a people who have a fierce sense of belonging and a low tolerance of those who like to refer to spades as earth-inverting horticultural implements.
Despite what the Conservative-leading think tank Policy Exchange reported just four years ago, the cities of northern England are not beyond hope: one only has to look at the way in which Bradford is being transformed and the dramatic process of reinvention that is taking place in Hull to grasp what the North is capable of.
A 2014 report disclosed that the spend per resident on publicly-funded infrastructure in London is £5,426 compared to £546 per head in Yorkshire and the Humber; a more level playing field is clearly needed and even greater levels of investment from Westminster are needed if the North-South divide is to join coalmining in our history books.