Global Politics - General Chat

[Wayno]

Nah, I get it. It's a generalisation which suits no one other than those looking to sew division, spin a narrative or fan a new culture war.

I don't think it's Burnham himself pushing a North vs London morality play, as much as his "King of the North" moniker may say otherwise, but that wasn't self appointed. His whole regionality focus isn't intended to divide or be PR, it's his devolution stance that comes out of being GM Mayor and that very public Tier 3 fight with the Tory government during Covid (this is when I and others knew he'd be Labour leader at some point) - and that was never "London get everything and we northerners get shafted," it was Westminster making a region absorb economic pain with zero funding or accountability to the people actually living with the decision. That's a structural argument about where power and money sit, not a dig at London or Londoners.

I think the actual problem is media laziness conflating "Westminster" with "London" as if they're the same thing. Westminster genuinely does concentrate power in a way that's spatially real - Treasury, most FTSE HQs, Parliament - but that's completely separate from London the city and the people in it, The shorthand collapses a legitimate power/geography argument and diminishes it in to the well-trodden North / South divide which has gone on so long it feels like it's just treated as a list of gripes instead of genuine structural issues that affect us all regardless of region. It's incredibly easy to do, and that's on journalists, not on Burnham.