Exciting news arrives. The Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has let it be known that he wants more northerners nominated for honours, as part of the ‘levelling up’ programme to which this government is so deeply committed. This will change every-thing and I foresee a Conservative majority at the next election of at least 200. I thought that as The Spectator’s north of St Albans correspondent I should identify some of the brilliant northerners who will shortly be in receipt of OBEs, MBEs, knighthoods and what have you.

– Wayne Rafferty, aged 33, a pharmaceutical distribution executive from Manchester, who even at the height of the Covid pandemic ensured that his customers in Moss Side were fully supplied with fentanyl and horse tranquillisers. (CH)

– Norman Redwall, aged 79, from Mexborough, for innovation. Since 1963 Mr Redwall has refashioned dentures salvaged from the local crematoria and sold them cheaply to townsfolk. (MBE)

– Mohammed Jihadi, aged 63, from Keighley, for services to the community. Mr Jihadi founded the Keighley and District Inter-Faith But Not Jews Dialogue forum and has reached out as a ‘mentor’ to many young white girls in his area. (Knighthood)

– Sheila Pigg, aged 41, from Peterlee, for services to the community. Sheila’s vibrant puppy farm has provided local people with many hundred adorable American pit bull terriers, only seven of which have eaten toddlers. (OBE)

– Ian Lavatory, aged 57, of Cumberland, for innovation. A popular local Labour politician, Ian has shown extraordinary innovation in ensuring that miners’ welfare payments ended up in exactly the right pockets. Or pocket. (Life peer)

– Jayden ‘Ratboy’ O’Byrne, aged 15, from Toxteth, for services to young people. An influencer, Jayden has produced many videos, always to an uncompromising ‘drill’ soundtrack, explaining to his peers how best to rob the homes of pensioners and smack them about a bit if they get lairy. (CBE)

– Woman, full name and age unknown, known locally as ‘Mad Aggie’, for providing local colour. For more than 30 years ‘Mad Aggie’ has stood on a piece of wasteland adjoining the A688 in Bishop Auckland, watching a mattress burn while shouting abuse at passing motorists and swigging from a can of cider. (OBE)

– Roz Harridan, aged 57, a social worker from Leeds, for political commitment and dedication. For 30 years Roz has striven to convince local people that every ill which has ever befallen them is the work of ‘Tory scum’. In 2008 she formed the organisation Middleton Women Against Everything. Before 2006 she was known as Roy Harridan.

That’s enough comic northerners (Ed).

My feeling at the moment is that Rishi and co. should give up pretending that they wish for something called ‘levelling up’, because I do not know of a single person up here who takes the claim seriously. Further, the more it is mentioned, the more cynically the northern electorate views it. The problems are long ingrained and a five-year parliamentary term could not even begin to scratch the surface.

The area in which I was brought up, Teesside, has still to recover from the de-industrialisation and recession of the early 1980s. Those many readers who worship at the shrine of Margaret Thatcher may well argue that the closures in uneconomic iron, steel, coal and petrochemical industries were necessary for the financial health of the country. Perhaps. All I would say is that it wasn’t very good for this part of the country. Unarguable is the fact that the jobs that went – especially in the steel industry – were skilled and semi-skilled and comparatively very well paid indeed. They were replaced, in almost every case, by McJobs. Cold calling, retail and so on.

The problem with, particularly, the north-east is low wages and has been for an entire generation – and you do not cure that simply by transferring a few Treasury posts up to Darlington, with its handy two hours and 30 minutes express train service to London. I agree with the dispersal from London of key posts in various institutions, if only for the fun of watching the bald young clerks trying to fathom out the local accent. But it is no more a meaningful change than when the BBC moved half of its staff up the M6 to Salford. What happened then was that the Beeb – well-meaning enough in intent – simply shipped up its southern staff and all those political prejudices so that there was little or no impact upon the way in which the country was portrayed. Salford remained a kind of exclave of Kensal Rise.

While low wages are the main cause of the inequality between the north and the south, there is perhaps a little bit more to the picture. Migration of our best-educated people to the south doesn’t help, but then nor does a chronic lack of investment in science, technology and industry. And we might add to that the stuff that the reporters talk about too rarely. Often inept, predatory or downright corrupt local authorities, for one.

The decline of the traditional nuclear and extended family is something else which has financially and emotionally hamstrung the poorest parts of our country. I once stood outside the dole office in Middlesbrough and interviewed those who went in and came out across a single day. Almost all were from broken homes and had gone on to break up homes themselves. This had ruined them, just as it will hugely disadvantage their children. So you might add bad life decisions to the list, too – that and a predilection for alcohol and awful food. All of this stuff is somewhere in the mix when we talk, or don’t talk, about levelling up.

If Rishi and co. wish to retain at least a handful of seats in the old Red Wall, then I would suggest they major on the issues of immigration (which is, I concede, difficult to do when you are letting 600,000 people in per year) and the wokery to which the Labour party and even more so the idiotic Lib Dems are still wedded. That at least has a bit of resonance.