We cannot afford to not give out more financial support – our national unity and cohesion depend on it

Editorial: Without money to pay rent or mortgage, some people will be forced to evade the guidelines and go to work

The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, says the country cannot afford it. In reality the country cannot afford not to do it (Getty)

Though he could never admit it, the reason why much of the north of England is being pushed into further restrictions, or held in already draconian regimes, is because of fundamental failures on the part of the prime minister himself.  

In other words, despite the global “second wave” of Covid-19, the extent of the new restrictions on the north of England and parts of the Midlands was not in fact inevitable or the fault of the people who live north of Watford. After all, the pubs in Hertfordshire or Surrey are not being closed down in the way they are in Liverpool and Manchester. The north/south divide, institutionalised now in three “tiers”, has never been more stark. The feeling that those in places now designated “tier 2” and “tier 3” feel like second- and third-class citizens is palpable. There is a sense of righteous anger at this stigmatisation of whole communities. More than that, the lack of pre-decision consultation is infantilising and insulting. The failure to offer further economic support will further impoverish hard-pressed areas. Yet it is not the fault of the people of Manchester, Middlesbrough or Nottingham that they are being impoverished.  

If, as the deputy chief medical officer for England, Jonathan Van-Tam, asserts, the position on hospital admissions is as grave as it was when the first lockdown was announced in March, then the question obviously arises as to why this should be the case. The answer to that is threefold.

First, the initial lockdown was eased too early as summer arrived. It may have been the right policy for the country as a whole, but many, particularly in the north, felt uneasy about the progressive relaxation of the rules. It felt premature, and so it was because infection rates were not sufficiently suppressed.

As the increasingly angry alliance of northern mayors point out, a Conservative government with its traditional political base firmly in the south of England and operating out of London is always going to be prone to a London-centric outlook. The capital has certainly escaped relatively lightly, despite its mayor Sadiq Khan actually advising further restrictions. In any case the earlier lockdown was lifted before the virus was under control in the north. It was an error of judgement.

The wider failure is that the time “bought” at such sacrifice in the initial national lockdown was, to an extent, squandered. Better treatments have been developed, and the work on the vaccine continued. But lockdowns can never be a permanent answer to a pandemic; if nothing changes, then when the lockdown is lifted the virus soon enough returns. That is precisely what has transpired, and the Eat Out to Help Out campaign may even have boosted the resurgence of coronavirus.

What should have happened – and has elsewhere – is that a national test and tracing system should have been developed during the lockdown and the favourable summer months. Test and trace was supposed to be the new first line of defence against Covid. It is still not complete. If it had been ready in June, July, August or September, as so often promised, then the new local lockdowns would not be so severe. But the “world beating” system never arrived; the “game changer” left the game unchanged. The depressing truth is that whenever the new lockdowns are eased they will, in the absence of efficient, rapid and comprehensive testing and tracing, eventually need to be reimposed, until a vaccine becomes widespread.  

If a lockdown is inevitable, then so should adequate financial support be inevitable. The chancellor, Rishi Sunak, says the country cannot afford it. In reality the country cannot afford not to do it, from an economic point of view but also from the point of view of national unity and cohesion – both essential to beating the virus. Without money to pay rent or mortgage, some people will be forced to evade the guidelines and go to work.  

The feeling of betrayal and fear in the north is raw. For the third time in the past 40 years the region is abandoned by a southern-dominated Conservative government. The north suffered grievously in the industrial recession of the early 1980s; and again in another slump and more pit closures in the 1990s. Now the forced closure of swathes of northern businesses with inadequate economic support will once again visit mass unemployment upon blameless towns and cities. Far from “putting an arm round” people, joblessness will more than double. So much, then, for levelling up, and so much for the “One Nation” pretensions of this self-styled people’s government.