Blaise Tapp: North/South divide getting wider again

As somebody who is equally at home in the Downs as the Pennines, I know a thing or two about the supposed North/South divide.

Although I am currently living in Sussex, with no plans of leaving, I very much revel in the role of professional northerner – making a point of calling strangers (male and female) ‘love’ and ever so slightly hamming up my South Manchester accent whenever the occasion warrants it. The north west and the South Coast have equal claim on my heart as I love both for their beauty, charm not to mention the challenges they both face. Which is why I’ve held my head in my hands more than once in the past few weeks as it becomes clear that a yawning North/South chasm is beginning to develop.

As it stands, the areas living under the Government’s newly-introduced Tier 3 restrictions are in the north west and while there are good and complex reasons for this, it is a significant blow in so many ways for a region I know better than any other.

The dreary, joyless types who have nothing better to do but ring into radio phone-ins have wasted no time in admonishing Scousers, Lancastrians and Mancunians that the situation they find themselves in is entirely their fault. The cacophony of cobblers that has been spouted by ill-informed dullards in recent days includes pearls of wisdom such as ‘They only have themselves to blame’.

There are many reasons why infection levels are so much higher in some parts of the north west than in other parts of the country including areas of high population density and significant student communities, who tend to live in each other’s pockets.

It is not, to quote one ill-informed acquaintance, because people living up north ‘like to party’, as if everybody living beyond Knutsford is living a Shameless-like existence. Listening to my pals in the north, there is a genuine belief that they have been hugely let down by London-based politicians, who were entrusted by millions of voters to make the big decisions and it is only likely that this simmering resentment will continue to grow.

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