Poverty isn’t just a Northern issue Andy.

[SummerSummerSummertime]

Caught the Prime Minister on a podcast this week and he’s really stuck on a constant, hyper-focus on the North. Ok we get it, things are bad up there (former industrial heartlands etc) but as PM for the whole country, he needs to remember that hardship doesn't stop at a regional border if he wants to maintain national support.
Severe deprivation is happening right across the country, not just in northern heartlands:

London: The capital holds some of the highest actual poverty rates once astronomical housing costs are factored in.

Coastal Communities: Southern seaside towns face deep, hidden deprivation, low wages, and crumbling infrastructure.

The South & Midlands: High living expenses, struggling high streets, and insecure work hit low-income families everywhere.

He also claimed on the podcast that past governments just saw the North as "different" and forgot about it. But by constantly banging on about the North, isn't he just fuelling that exact same fire?
If he keeps treating the North as a special case, he's actively reinforcing a regional divide. Moving focus or power from Whitehall to Manchester might sound great on a podcast, but it does absolutely nothing for a struggling family in a southern coastal town who feel just as invisible to this new government as they did to the last one.
Poverty is a national crisis, not a regional identity.

If Andy wants to keep broad support, his messaging needs to acknowledge and support struggling communities everywhere.

But is another example of where the vagueness leaves it open. He talks about doing it through the Metro Mayors - but over 50% of the population don't live in an area with a Metro Mayors. We do we just get a discount on the tax that the Mayors get to spend on their areas?

My local Mayor is a bit more like Trumpton - their role is going round the village with the fancy gown, hat and chain round their neck opening fetes. I don't they need any power wielding those ribbon cutting scissors seems to go to their head already.

There’s jobs everywhere. I work in a shop, a shop that has stores up and down the country I’d get paid the same if I lived north, south, east or west.

But if I lived in the north my rent would be infinitely cheaper. No I can’t move right now because I had kids when I was really really young and now they’re in school and settled. But if I lived up north I’d definitely have far more disposable income. I think I speak for a lot of southerners when I say we’re tired of northerners acting like we’re richer than them when if anything it’s the other way around.

Well, yes but the areas who do have metro/ regional mayors include Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, East Midlands, Greater Lincolnshire, London, West Midlands,
West of England. So, very much not all in the North of England.

So, again, while I agree there are legitimate, knotty, interesting questions about how devolution will practically work in areas there aren’t a Metro Mayor, those questions don’t in any way explain or excuse the blatant prejudice at the heart of this thread, which is the bizarre idea that because Andy Burnham has a Northern accent and is proud and passionate about the place he grew up, he can’t possibly understand there is poverty and inequality elsewhere in the country too.

This!

I do love that AB is genuinely saying he wants to sort out social care. This would be so amazing and very fucking long overdue. I just hope he can deliver.

The policies he is talking about will benefit all of the UK

There are fewer jobs than there were. Many are low paid and the slary impossible to live on.

This is a very good point. Top council executives are almost all on salaries higher than the PM’s and with extremely generous pension and settlement packages when they leave/ are forced out. Very often it’s hard to see what their skills are.

I agree with you OP.

yes up north esp north east has many especially historical issues with poverty.

However, for example Cornwall is the most poor county in the whole of the EU! Go to Croydon, East London, Portsmouth, Southampton, Slough, and general London is not paved with gold, very much the opposite. Go to one of the richest counties outside London (Elmbridge), and you will drive on the very worst roads in the UK. Everyone thinks the south has amazing public transport, London has the Underground, other than that it’s haphazard, very expensive and generally late or cancelled.

Go to Manchester and they have a smart city centre, trams (never seen them in the South but I could be wrong). Yes there are poor parts but the South has a lot too, not just the south, go to Lincs, Cornwall and let’s not forget Scotland, Wales, N Ireland.
I don’t mind he’s taken to 10 in the North, but that’s got to be like EU moving it all to Strasbourg once a month - very costly! Shift changes to take into account transfers, hotel stays away from home.

I hope he comes back off holiday which isn’t bad 2 weeks into the top job of the country and makes some actual change.

My brother lives in the north - it takes him over an hour to drive to Inverness for anything from food to optician appointments to the local college. Fuel is considerably more expensive, a car absolutely essential. Nearly all delivery companies charge a premium to deliver to IV postcodes, if the delivery there at all. Heating costs are also much higher as not only is there no mains gas and again delivery of oil is so much more expensive there, the climate means more heating is required.

It certainly isn’t cheaper to live in the north.

Hopefully nobody will have grounds for complaint now. Burnham’s back from his holiday and embarking on a UK wide tour.

The whole parliament moved. AB is moving. For 1 or 2 days a week. It’s a bit different.

No but if we want everyone to have equal opportunities surely the demographics would have to be identical. You'd need the same infrastructure for starters, (something which was partially promised by HS2 and most people agreed it was needed) but also once house prices rise and people begin to be pushed out of affordable areas (as has happened in the South) you create a whole host of new problems. Environmentally it isn't always beneficial either, much as everyone seems to be happy to keep building down South there is a lot of farmland at risk up North and these big developments come with negatives as well as positives.

Inverness? In Scotland? When people say “the north” they usually mean the north of England no?

This discussion is getting a bit like game of thrones now lol. “The north” vs beyond the wall.

Anyway the depths of the Scottish countryside is a bit different to what we usually see discussed which is northerners in cities or towns in northern England claiming they’re far poorer than southerners.

I could easily get transferred to somewhere in the north, my company have shops everywhere, and I’d still get paid exactly the same wage. Only difference would be my rent would be far cheaper and I’d have more disposable income I’d also probably be able to afford a bigger home in general.

No! It's what English people say when they mean the north of England. I find it genuinely funny that the English don't realise this. Scottish people don't refer to the north of England simply as 'the North'. If you say 'the n/North' in Scotland you mean northern Scotland.

I don’t know why Scotland has been brought into this? I was never talking about Scotland? My heads not thinking straight right now anyway but when I see people complaining about how poor they are “in the north” they’re always people living in the north of England. Scottish people will specify they’re in Scotland from what I’ve seen. In all fairness to Scot’s I don’t see them moaning much even though I know Glasgow is pretty poor. A stoic people really

Idk my point is just that I could easily do the same job in the north for the same wage but I’d have more disposable income because housing costs are less there.

North vs South is only a useful distinction to a point, partially because, ridiculously enough, "North" seems to have become synonymous with "Manchester". Most of the North is not Manchester. Most of the South is not London. Lots of the country isn't in either the North or the South. The vast, vast majority of people live in the rest of the country in smaller cities, market towns, and villages.

So are we talking about the PM or not?

Also Scotland is not simply ‘Scotland’; there are huge disparities between the central belt and other areas, especially the north and the islands.

I don’t really care much for talking about the PM or Scotland right now tbh. I’m just saying many southerners (southern English if you must) are sick of hearing northerners (northern English if you must) droning on about how poor they are and how rich we apparently are.

My only contribution to this thread is to say if I lived up there I’d earn the same money but have far more disposable income because the rents cheaper.

A quick google of rents in Essex, Norfolk and Dorset vs Manchester suggest rents in Manchester are higher.

Yeah because it’s a massive city. If I compare the average rent price in my town to a town the same size in the north it’s a lot more. And as for buying a house you could get a mansion up there for the same price of a regular family home down here.

Yes Inverness is in Scotland, as in the North of the UK, that AB is the PM of.
The only people that mean the north of England when they say the North are English who seem to think that absolutely everything starts and ends with them.

Yeah someone already basically said the same thing and I’ve already replied to that

Except that isn’t what he’s proposed. He’s been talking about devolving spending power but not fiscal responsibility for raising the money, i.e. taxing everyone else more to pay for his favoured regions to spend their money on things upon which those paying for it will have no vote. All the drawbacks of devolution with none of the benefits and fundamentally undemocratic.

If this is pursued it will waste tens of billions of pounds on white elephants, undermine democracy, cause more division and do nothing to promote growth, let alone “raise living standards in every postcode” as he claimed.

Last time I checked people in the southeast, southwest, midlands, Wales, Scotland and NI also had postcodes, as do those who live in areas without a mayor. A half-baked and economically illiterate shitshow appears to await us yet again. Joyful.