Northerners increasingly feel lockdown measures are unfairly imposed from above
Furious talk of the “north/south divide” surfaced again and again when I interviewed voters for my new book, Beyond the Red Wall.
Resentment is long-standing and reflected in recent polling by BritainThinks: 64% of people in the north-east, 68% in Yorkshire and 70% in the north-west believe that “other areas get more resource than mine” while only 32% of people in London and the south-east do. One “red waller” told me: “The north-west generates money and it all goes down to London. We create it, we need it, but they get it.” Another explained: “You could draw a line right across the middle of Britain – the bottom half is the haves and the top half is the have-nots.”
