The Northern Powerhouse is supposed to bridge the inequality gap between London and the north - but will it succeed in helping already well-off cities? Tony Chapman considers the evidence

LONDON looks to nowhere to confirm its identity. Like New York and Tokyo, this is a proper metropolis. And as one of the world’s most successful cities – it is quick to dispense advice. What we need, many of the Westminster set say, is for Manchester to become the London of the North.

“What Manchester does today, the world does tomorrow”, the city said in its heyday. So Mancunians are not keen to emulate London. As one wag on Twitter put it: “If Manchester becomes London of the north will everyone stop thanking the bus drivers there as well?”

Northern cities like Manchester, Newcastle, Sheffield and Leeds are doing pretty well these days. And politicians favour the idea of “ripple effect”, where wealth from the centre flows to the periphery. But the veneer of city centre success can be tissue thin – leaving surrounding areas in the economic lurch. Try asking the people who live in Tower Hamlets and Hackney, where the glittering towers of the square mile cast their shadows but not their pennies.

The Department for Communities and Local Government recently published the English Indices of Multiple Deprivation. It makes for grim reading. The North has 12 local authorities in a list of the 20 least affluent areas of the country – including, of course, Manchester. We have no local authorities, by contrast, in the 20 most affluent areas.

So maybe northern cities do need to get it together and form a Northern Powerhouse as the Chancellor of the Exchequer hopes? To succeed, the project needs people to challenge local rivalries not embed them. So Manchester need not be our capital – but one amongst many city hubs. Geographers enthuse about ‘polycentric city regions’ where the sum is worth more than the value of the individual parts. It’s not just a theory. It works for the cities of the Ruhr in Germany and Holland’s Randstad.

Economic cooperation doesn’t mean that places on the periphery have to lose their identity. It’s all about building interactions of trust and reciprocity. It’s easily said, but hard to do when cultural differences run deep and people feel that city folk don’t fully respect them. It’s important to remember, though, that many who besport a blasé metropolitan persona by day, return to the suburb, market town or the countryside in the evening to live a very different life.

At a recent Institute for Local Governance seminar on the potential impact of a northern powerhouse on rural areas, Newcastle University’s Professor Mark Shucksmith demonstrated that there’s more two-way traffic than many people think. Wealth flows to the countryside because that’s where many highly paid people choose to commute. Weekly household income in hamlets stands at about £800 while it’s just £666 in urban areas.

Professor Shucksmith shows that rural areas are not just a wealthy playground. They have more business start ups per capita. True, rural businesses are mainly small and home-based. Often using cutting edge digital technologies, he shows, many have high levels of profit. Significantly, 43% of rural businesses want to expand.

On the surface, rural areas with the most beautiful villages, best transport links and classier facilities are doing fine, although often at the expense of the locals who are pushed out from their villages as house prices rise but local wages remain comparably low. But the north of England is also littered with former industrial villages, such as Loftus in Redcar and Cleveland, where the carpet was pulled from under its feet when industries collapsed. Doff Pollard, who led Tees Valley’s Rural Community Council for many years, makes a plea for economic planners to be more respectful of skilled workers in isolated areas.

Working with their hands, she argues, isn’t about brawn – but about a deeper intelligence and problem solving with materials and processes. It’s hard for people with such skills to adapt to new ways – and because of this they and their children pay a heavy price in terms of educational performance, health and wellbeing. When professionals complete their long apprenticeships, they rightly expect a well-paid job and a bit of social standing – it’s too easy to forget that skilled workers feel that they earned that too.

The North of England is a big place. Its diverse cultures must be embraced to get the best from its people. Pretending that it needs a new London to achieve that is daft. But that’s not what the Chancellor is arguing for – his vision is to capitalise on connections and interactions across our great cities while benefitting the peripheral areas too. I hope that he’ll put our money where his mouth is.

  • Tony Chapman is a Professorial Fellow, St Chad's College, Durham University