Industry | 2009.04.16
John Harris: Regional differences persist despite recession
We were told this crisis would end the country\'s north south-divide. In fact it\'s worse than ever
Remember the southern recession? Back in October last year, the idea was fashionable for about a week as the crisis in financial services dominated the news and the venerable economist and Labour peer Lord Desai offered a much-discussed analysis of who was going to get hurt. What was looming, he said, was "a dramatic change from the days when workers who lost their jobs were most likely to be semi-skilled or manual manufacturing workers - this is a middle-class recession in the south".
The argument seemed off-beam; seven months later, it looks borderline ridiculous. Earlier this year, the Centre for Cities thinktank looked at the local economies best positioned to ride out the downturn: Oxford, Cambridge, Reading and Aberdeen led the field, while the rollcall of places destined to be ground beneath the recessionary heel included Hull, Liverpool and Wigan. In the last round of unemployment figures, the regions that experienced the highest jumps in their jobless rate included the West Midlands, the north-east and the north-west - all of which registered increases at least three times greater than the south-east. Delivering the decisive blow to the Desai thesis, this week\'s publication of grim manufacturing output figures caused the British Chambers of Commerce to bemoan a "divergence between manufacturing and services" and hold out the hope that in the latter, the downturn might just be nearing the beginning of the end.
So, welcome to an achingly familiar plot, and proof of how about 15 years of supposed prosperity left one of our most lamentable national imbalances unchanged. Give or take its pockets of affluence, the north remains stuck in the shadow of its industrial past and blitzed anew by the geographical equivalent of last in, first out. By contrast, the services-driven south may be suffering, but it can take comfort from the iron rule of the UK economy: the closer you are to London, the better things get.
If you want a case study in all this, try Hull. About one in five of the working population has no formal qualifications, and through 2008, the numbers claiming jobseeker\'s allowance went up by a third. The promotional blurbs for the local regeneration agency enthuse about the likes of Zara, H&M and Holiday Inn Express, which surely points up that circular fantasy whereby increasing numbers work in retail and hospitality, earning just about enough to keep other shops and hotels in business - until the music stops, and the model withers.
At the other end of the country, there\'s a paradigmatic success story that gets little attention: Cambridge, where proximity to the capital and a ready supply of high-end graduates have created one of the few examples of that shop-soiled phrase "the knowledge economy" actually meaning something. So far, it\'s weathering the storm amazingly well. If you fancy moving there but get scared by the house prices, you should have a look at the nearby newtown of Cambourne, a bizarre place full of faux-traditional architecture that sums up the choice faced by millions of Britons - to live without roots and survive, or cling to them and sink.
And now look\'s what coming: a general election in which our creaking electoral system is likely to hand victory to a party with little presence in the north, meaning the woes of the old industial heartlands may be worsened by a political freeze-out. Gordon Brown, meanwhile, is still blathering on about some elusive sense of common national purpose that might unite not just the UK\'s ethnic patchwork, but Reading and Rotherham, Guildford and Grimsby. As with a few other things, it looks like he had his chance and blew it.
• John Harris presents The North-South Divide on BBC4 tonight at 9pm john.harris@guardian.co.uk
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]cial-crisis-north-south-divide
