A fairer Westminster in which ‘levelling up’ the North isn’t just a slogan, but a tangible truth, is a pursuit Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram have wholeheartedly committed to.
Taking their experience in Parliament, now Mayors of Greater Manchester and the Liverpool City Region, shook hands on leaving Westminster together to reshape the political narrative up North - and in turn rewrite an inherently flawed political system which perpetuates disparity.
Adding ‘co-authors’ to their double act credentials in March, ‘Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain’ is an account of their two different routes into Parliament, what made them like-minded colleagues, and more importantly the shared experiences that made them both staggeringly different to the other figures surrounding them at Westminster.
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In the book, following an exploration of Northern roots and significant shared experiences that defined our region - in particular the Hillsborough disaster - unfolds a ten-point plan in which they believe could bring the social change that the country is crying out for.
In an exclusive excerpt from the book, we hear how Parliament's political policies, centralisation and whip system, stifles the independence of MPs, causing regional neglect that Northerners are all too familiar with...
The North–South divide is no historical accident. It is in fact the product of long-term national policy. It is only when there is clarity about this stark truth that everything else starts to fall into place. Look closely at the British Parliament today. You can still clearly see the influence of the feudal society from which it evolved. Wealthy families granted large land interests in centuries past are still making your laws in the unelected House of Lords. There are more people in the Lords who went to Eton than there are peers who were born in the Liverpool City Region or Greater Manchester. Meanwhile, over in the House of Commons, there are clear echoes of the ancient ‘rotten boroughs’ in a first-past-the-post system which gives some people and some places more influence than others.
So, if our national Parliament has never represented all of Britain’s regions and nations equally, is there any real surprise that there is such disparity in living standards across our land? Obviously not. But the make-up of Parliament alone doesn’t describe why things are as they are in an unequal Britain today. There is a deeper question of where power truly lies and how it is used or misused. Our experience of the Parliamentary whip system is that it has the effect of transferring power out of this flawed Parliament and into a small number of hands – largely unelected – in the heart of the Whitehall machine.
At any given time, a majority of MPs in the Commons will be required via the whips’ offices to back the official line, which often tends to be the long-held positions of various Whitehall departments. It is almost as if those who built Britain’s system of national governance over the centuries took great care at every step of the journey to give away as little power as possible to the people and their representatives.
When we were first elected as MPs, and entered Parliament, we were labouring under the misapprehension that we would have real power to change some of the things we came to see as wrong when we were growing up. It was not long before we realised that was a mirage. Unlike the US, where elected representatives are allowed an independence of thought, the UK’s whip system turns representatives of the people into human rubber stamps – or, in a phrase MPs use knowingly about themselves, ‘lobby fodder’. The MP’s main role in life is to nod through the decisions of the fifty or so people who really run the country; most of whom, you won’t be surprised to learn, are unelected and hold London-centric views. This latter adjective also accurately describes the permanent policies people in these powerful positions seek to protect and promote. It suits them to hoard resources and power in the place where they live rather than allow any upstart rival power bases to spring up elsewhere in the UK and weaken their position.
For decades, the Treasury’s Green Book has set out the rules against which potential investments must be tested. In short, it gives a higher score to projects which will produce the most returns for UK plc in the shortest possible time. In other words, it is a formula to give most to the already-affluent parts of the UK – mainly to be found in London and the South East – and least to areas that are struggling. This policy hasn’t just helped create the North–South divide; it is a mechanism by which it is continually widened.
To summarise: Britain is wired for regional inequality – and its impotent Parliament has so far proved itself incapable of changing that. By keeping MPs trapped in party-based tramlines, the whip system has so far successfully prevented a cross-party rebellion of the English regions in support of a fairer national investment strategy. Beyond regional disparities, there are other ways in which this over-concentration of political power in one postcode is not conducive to the public good. It is a system in which already-powerful interests find it far too easy to get their way. Corporate lobbyists have few people to persuade to land the contracts they want. Manipulative media outlets only have to hold a few powerful people to ransom to make the nation dance to their divisive tunes. And, through the decades, when disaster has struck, the institutions of government have only had a few phone calls to make to get the cover-up underway.
What else explains how an entire English city could cry injustice for twenty years, with complete justification, only to be completely ignored? For Liverpool in the 80s, read Derry in the 70s and Aberfan in the 60s. Think Grenfell, contaminated blood, Primodos, Windrush, and the nuclear test veterans. Watch the recent ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. The tactics deployed against the sub-postmasters and postmistresses were also used against all of the victims of the scandals mentioned above. It is a pattern that keeps on repeating down the decades and a playbook as old as time: a powerful centre plays divide and rule, creates false narratives to turn public opinion against powerless people and places and then casts them into the wilderness. It is the unelected British state at its very worst. How can it do it? Because of the near-unlimited power of people at its centre.
Extracted from Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain by Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram. Out now from Trapeze.
