When the lockdown tiers are announced, it is inevitable that huge swathes of the north will be under much tighter restrictions than the south. It is not hard to see how a divided Britain translates into political trouble, as I say in the magazine this week. Labour and northern leaders will claim that support packages would be more generous — and the situation better handled — if it was the south that was bearing the brunt. ‘It’ll be like flooding,’ warns one cabinet minister. ‘People will say: they’d take it more seriously if it was happening in Surrey.’
There’s a Tory worry that this situation could provide Labour with a wedge to drive between Johnson and his new northern supporters. You can already hear talk that Tories are happy to incarcerate the north with little additional financial support because life is continuing as normal in the south. One minister complains that the accusation ‘is nasty, sly politics — but it has a resonance’.
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