The government is widening two divides – north vs south and central vs local

By implementing stronger restrictions in the north than in the south, Boris Johnson’s has created a chance for Labour to regain support, writes Andrew Grice

Nottingham is set to face fresh restrictions (AFP/Getty)

When voters in the “red wall” of Labour seats in the north and Midlands flocked to the Conservatives last December, the main factors were seen as Boris Johnson’s “get Brexit done” message and their antipathy towards Jeremy Corbyn.

However, there was a third reason. Many of the switchers felt the north had been long neglected by London-centric governments that allowed wealth to be concentrated in the south. These people demanded their fair share of the national pie and Johnson promised just that.

He made a start, by rewriting Treasury rules on infrastructure projects, which favoured London and the southeast. But his attempt to bridge the north-south divide is now under real threat in the coronavirus pandemic. Tough restrictions in the north are expected to be announced on Monday, including the closure of pubs and restaurants. The new local furlough scheme will be less generous than the one Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, introduced in April.

Although the government is running to catch up with the alarming rise in infections in the north, it is making a hash of introducing the new curbs. It has alienated mayors and council leaders in the region, who offered to support the new lockdown if they were consulted in advance, saw the evidence for it, and secured adequate job protection measures. The local leaders were furious that details of the clampdown emerged in Thursday’s newspapers.

Andy Burnham, the mayor of Greater Manchester, who has taken flak from some Labour colleagues for working constructively with the government, declared it had become “impossible” to work with it. Likening ministers to a struggling football manager, he said they have “lost the dressing room”.

Some Tory aides suggest Labour mayors, councillors and MPs are playing politics, but the criticism of the government is shared by Tory MPs and council leaders in the north. William Hague, the Tory peer and former party leader, told Politico in an online interview that local leaders were “right to be upset” about the way the new lockdown emerged as they had to explain it to their residents. He said the government had not secured “local ownership” of the restrictions.

Many voters in what the Tories now call their “blue wall” still give the government the benefit of the doubt, and are not yet ready to admit they made a mistake by voting Tory. But there are ominous signs for Johnson. A survey of 8,000 people by Lord Ashcroft, the Tories’ former deputy chair, found that 64 per cent of Labour-turned-Tory voters think the restrictions are being eased too quickly given the continuing risk from the virus. One in four thinks the government has handled things so badly that things turned out much worse than they needed to be.

Some ministers fear that imposing the new restrictions might fuel a dangerous narrative in the north, reviving memories of an “uncaring” Tory party in the region dating back to de-industrialisation under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. It took many voters almost 40 years to trust the Tories again last December. Having more severe restrictions in the north than the south might also provoke claims the Tories are using the region’s people as “guinea pigs” or “punishing” northerners for not sticking to the rules.

It’s a dangerous moment for Johnson. It could create an unexpectedly early opening for Labour to regain support in its former strongholds, a necessary first step to regaining power at the next general election. Keir Starmer is not one to waste such an opportunity. He said on Friday in The Telegraph: “The party that was elected on a promise to level up is instead talking down to huge swathes of the country. This is fuelling public frustration and resentment in the system.”

Starmer accused the government of adopting a misguided, arrogant and counterproductive “Whitehall knows best” approach. He is not alone. As Hague said, “We have a habit in this country of responding to crises in an over-centralised way.”

Johnson allies insist the government does consult local leaders. Yet the country is becoming even more centralised when some functions such as test and trace would be better carried out at local level. The record of councils in tracing the contacts of people who test positive is much better than the private firms handed contracts by the misnamed NHS test and trace.

This government’s mantra is “trust no one”. True, Nicola Sturgeon does have a political as well as a public health agenda in her response to the virus in Scotland. But the local Labour leaders in England want to work with the government, not against it.

Team Johnson would improve the Tories' chances of retaining their new friends in the north if it didn’t regard everyone outside its circle as the enemy.