Andy Burnham

 

Subject: Andy Burnham

Is this the beginning or an extension of the break up if the United Kingdom. We know that Scotland is on a cliff edge of breaking away to become an independent country and now yesterday Andy Burnham the elected mayor of Greater Manchester has thrown down the gauntlet to the government by threatening to ignore the governments edict  and has refused to move into a more stringent isolation system by closing the doors of many of the hospitality industries outlets. The claim by Burnham is that the diktat from Westminster has been made without the financial support which was paid when it last closed the country down, a furlough system which paid 80% of full time wages but is now reduced to 60% of a full time wage. His claim is that the people in the North are being treated as second class citizens in a two tier economy.

The pandemic schism, plus Brexit has opened England up into a number of divisions which only highlights a gap between the north and the south which was already there.

Most countries have their geographical differences. North and South Italy fore instance  Spain is deeply divided in its Basque region. France and Germany both have their regional differences often spewing out acrimony which goes back decades.

The UK is an Island with a history of a centralised monarchy trying to quell uprisings of tribal affiliation. The history books are full of Scotish Princes and Welsh leaders to say nothing of the ongoing refusal of the Irish to play ball in the Westminster centric view of governance.  The appalling treatment of the Irish in the Potato Famine cast a deep shadow over the English and its dominion, the bloody wars against the Scots and less so in Wales, made ancestral memory a murky one and even within the boarders of England the strife of civil war is still an active part in our literature.

It's only in recent generations that an attempt was made to ameliorate the London centric view with local government given limited powers, the most important of which was the election of mayors in the major towns and cities, mayors who become spokes people for local grievance.

Andy Burnham is only the latest figure to take a pot at Whitehall's uneven handling of power in so far as it's reflected in the northern cities and the surrounding towns. The Militant-tendency  a left wing council group in Liverpool during Margaret Thatchers term caused her much angst. Their slogan "better to break the law than break the poor" has echo's in Burnhams speech yesterday and shows how out of kilter the Westminster bubble can get in its London centric view of the world. Burnham's point that the restrictions imposed in London on Manchester were not backed by science and would put an unnecessarily load on a impoverished region was fair comment. When last imposed nation wide it was accompanied by the furlough scheme which covered the basic cost of living. Why then the argument goes are people in the North being asked to further impoverish themselves or is it that the Government has a different opinion of people who live in the North to those who live in the Home Counties.

This divide is not only economic but reflects the difference in the way people think and react. Part tribal, part bound in a local philosophy founded on past history of which Mrs Thatchers use of the police as storm troopers to break the miners strike is still raw in the minds of many.  Peering over the ideological wall which separates north and south one sees the differences. From the grim battlements of towns in the north who's life blood, the textile mills were dismantled in the 1960s and 70s without any meaningful reinvestment put in place, the people left to languish on Benefits. It was the same in Wales when Thatchers government closed the coal mines, whole villages became ghost towns and remain so to this day. People still fight the old fights, martyrs to progress, as seen by the City can recite their grievance when the State came down on them in an ugly, heavy handed fashion in pursuance of an economic benefit for a few at a cost to he many.

This ideological divide, the sort of Kitchener "send them over the top" message or the more modern parlance "collateral damage" becomes acceptable when seen from Downing Street.

Andy Burnham's emotional call yesterday was only the latest continuance of this plea for fairness and nondiscrimination.