Covid: Is the government being 'London-centric' when it comes to northern England's local lockdowns?
By ITV Granada Political Correspondent Hannah Miller
‘Anger, frustration, fatigue and anxiety’ is how one councillor in Oldham describes the mood in the town.
The feelings have built up over ten weeks of coronavirus restrictions, which govern even the tiniest of social interactions - who you can meet at the pub, who can come round for tea, or whether you can meet a friend to walk your dog in the park.
Despite the restrictions, which have been in place to varying degrees throughout the summer, the infection rate in many parts of the north of England is soaring.
There’s no way of knowing if it would be even higher if the restrictions hadn’t been in place, but even those who dispute the claim they are ‘not working’ will admit they’re ‘not working well enough’.
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But while the restrictions have predominantly affected people’s social lives, they’ve taken an economic toll as well.
Restaurant owners talk of people cancelling when they realise they can’t have a meal with their friends, market stall holders say footfall is lower because people are simply too scared to come out.
In Bolton, businesses were shut down overnight and given £1,500 for every three weeks they were forced to be closed.
Even Conservative MPs admit that wasn’t enough, leaving small business owners to talk of feeling ‘abandoned’ and ‘forgotten’.
For a long time Greater Manchester’s mayor Andy Burnham has accused the government of a ‘London-centric’ approach to lifting lockdown, arguing the virus had not been eradicated in the north when the country started to re-open.
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It’s a claim the government vehemently denies, but as the prospect of the closure of parts of the northern economy looms ever closer, it’s one that becomes ever more attractive to those looking for someone to blame.
Why the North is the epicentre right now is complex and uncertain, but long-standing deprivation, household sizes, and national policy decisions are undoubtedly in the mix.
Weekly Test and Trace statistics consistently show the scheme doesn’t work as well in hard-hit towns in the North.
Any suggestion infections are rising because people are somehow incapable or unwilling to follow the guidelines only serves to fuel resentment further, as if northerners are somehow the naughty children who brought rising infections on themselves.
While many accept the need for ‘something’ to be done, the whiff of double standards has grown stronger through the summer.
By the metric the government applied to parts of the north in July, people in the Prime Minister’s constituency would have been under restrictions weeks ago.
He insists the decision-making process is ‘transparent’, but the average infection rate in Greater Manchester was just 23.9/100,000 when the Government moved so quickly as to announce ‘urgent’ new restrictions around 9pm via the health secretary’s Twitter feed.
Now the infection rate in Hillingdon, west London, is twice that and rising. In Richmond-upon-Thames it is more than four times as high. But no one there is being told to stop seeing their friends.
Ministers insist their approach is ‘local’, but it hasn’t come with the local resources that councils would like to see.
MPs and metro mayors complain of being cut out of decision-making and facing a fight to be heard at every turn - testing data and self-isolation payments both battles that have been won, with local control of contact tracing next on the list.
And no-one on the streets of Liverpool believes a lockdown of London would ever be called ‘local’.
If ten million people are plunged into further restrictions next week, that will be more than the population of the capital.
Claiming the approach is ‘local’ only serves to enhance the deep-rooted feeling that the North is an afterthought in the world of Westminster politics.
That feeling isn’t helped when the Prime Minister gets the North East restrictions wrong in a press conference, or suggests to the House of Commons that people in lockdown areas are still shielding (they’re not).
When the Health Secretary seemingly forgets that some parts of Greater Manchester have tighter restrictions than others, the blunder risks coming across as casual disregard for the sacrifices people are being expected to make.
There is a palpable fear in town halls from Salford to Sheffield about the impact that closing hospitality may have - leaders talk of 'genuine hardship, job losses and business failure this winter'. A sense of doom hangs over the region, accompanied by an unwillingness to give up their fight for support.
But for many less entwined with the day-to-day politics, the lack of an exit strategy leaves them with little hope.
For almost three months rising infection rates have been seen as a ‘northern’ problem, bubbling away in Blackburn and Bradford but causing little concern to the country.
But almost any Public Health Director you speak to in the North believes they are at the crest of a wave that will eventually engulf the nation.
This could be the first ‘North-South divide’ to be eradicated, but for all the wrong reasons.