Lynsey Hanley makes many valid points (The myth of a reactionary ‘red wall’ obscures the causes of the north-south divide, 8 December). However, it is not a north-south divide but a centre-periphery divide that characterises England’s distorted economy. Cornwall is the poorest county in England, and here the inequalities are amplified by austerity cuts. As local government jobs have been slashed, and the services previously provided and managed locally are now outsourced to large corporations, all the better-paid careers, jobs and profits are hoovered up the A30 to headquarters, leaving peripheral areas with the low-paid work.
To make matters worse, the second homes and holiday trade mean Cornwall, unlike Barrow-in-Furness, doesn’t even get the bonus of cheaper housing, and we’ve now lost our “objective one” Euro-dosh, in exchange for a few extra fish.
Andrew Cameron
Helston Water, Cornwall
• The key to levelling up, as Lynsey Hanley writes, is not just “raising up the north”, it’s also the need to “deflate London’s bubble”. Some time ago, the Liberal party leader Jo Grimond said in the House of Commons: “As the recent plight of many areas in the north and west has shown, the steady concentration of power and wealth in London and the south-east is undermining the whole fabric of social and economic life of this country.
“But wealth will not move so long as London and the south-east remains the nucleus of power – the seat of government, the centre of the nationalised industries, and the heart of much of the nation’s life. Not only wealth, but also political power, must move away from London.”
That was on 17 December 1963. Since then, decade by decade, the position has got worse. Surely it’s finally time for truly radical action.
Tony Greaves
Liberal Democrat, House of Lords
• Lynsey Hanley writes that anyone living outside the south needs a car to get around as “buses run only sporadically”. A slight exaggeration, surely? Millions of people in the north manage to get around without driving. My local bus service runs every seven or eight minutes during weekdays (hardly sporadic), using a fleet of brand-new electric buses.
Public transport in the north certainly needs more investment, but portraying it as almost non-existent is just plain wrong and will only encourage more car use.
John Bourn
Gateshead, Tyne and Wear
• Regional inequalities are a problem in England and the UK; however, I am not convinced by Lynsey Hanley’s claim that England is the “most geographically imbalanced economy in Europe”. England’s problems are at least partly mitigated by its size, as many people can commute to big cities from other areas.
This is one reason why England has not experienced the mass depopulation of rural areas and the widespread collapse of communities that has occurred in bigger European countries such as Italy, Spain and France, as economic and cultural capital is centred in cities such as Turin, Milan, Barcelona and Paris. The phenomenon Ms Hanley identifies would appear to be a common European problem.
Michael Cunningham
Wolverhampton
• Did the north-south divide of England start in Roman times when they split their province into Britannia Superior (the southern part) and Britannia Inferior (the northern part)?
Gerard Cavalier
Southampton
