Abandon northern English cities to the rats and pigeons, argues Tory-influencing think tank

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Proving conclusively that the phrase ‘think tank’ is misleading in suggesting that such influential groups actually involve any thinking, a think tank has announced that northern England cities such as Liverpool, Sunderland and Bradford are ‘beyond revival’ and residents should move south. Policy Exchange is a very influential right-wing think tank credited with many ideas taken up by the Conservative Party under David Cameron.

Policy Exchange said current regeneration policies were ‘failing’ the people they were supposed to help, and that a mass migration to London, Cambridge and Oxford would stop them becoming ‘trapped’ in poorer areas. One of the report authors, Tim Leunig, a lecturer in economic history at the London School of Economics, has acknowledged this may be seen as ‘barmy’. A Liverpool Labour MP, Peter Kilfoyle, has called it ‘utter nonsense’.

So there you have it. If the Tories win the next General Election, all those of us who live outside London and the South East will be expected to pack up our bags and migrate as economic refugees to London, Oxford and Cambridge. Disadvantaged and left-out northerners will surely appreciate the cleaner air, lower crime rates, friendlier people, co-operative caring communities, much more affordable housing, and all the green spaces that cities like London have to offer. The children of the north will all be able to look forward to guaranteed places at Oxford and Cambridge universities. We, in our many millions, will undoubtedly be welcomed with open arms by the overwhelming majority of current residents in those cities, for, we all know, every one of them has a well-paid job and lacks for nothing.

It will help, of course, that southerners hear you speaking with a northern accent and immediately peg you as charmingly dumb and romantically poor. Perhaps many of us could don flat caps and smoke Woodbines, and become employed as museum tour guides, explaining with the authority of experience what it’s like to work in a mill six days a week producing cotton and matches.

It wasn’t long ago that Liverpool was the City of Culture. Ah, but that must have been a silly mistake. Nobody in Liverpool appreciates the arts. If they’re not at home watching reality TV, people are out breaking into cars to nick and sell sat-navs so that they can feed their 15 children back in the two up, two down with an outside toilet. That’s assuming anybody in Liverpool has sat-navs to steal, eh?

Oh. Wait. Don’t David Cameron and his friends constantly berate, not without good reason, the current government’s London-centric approach? And yet, if Policy Exchange had its way, we would be one nation living in three mega-cities, with a tiny percentage of people living in the countryside and the remainder of our great cities abandoned to rats, pigeons, and revolutionaries. It’s all very Mad Max and Judge Dredd, only without the need for a messy nuclear apocalypse to drive people into urban hell. No, economic ineptitude and social snobbery can do that job quite nicely.

Is Policy Exchange aware that the overwhelming majority of English people don’t live in Oxford, Cambridge, or London? And if we all moved to those cities, wouldn’t we end up competing with the post-EU acceptance influx of Romanians and Poles for work on building sites and in the service industries? Ah, but this would at least drive wages down for the already lowest-paid jobs, and get more people living on next to nothing in order for big corporations to buck the imminent recession and make huge profits—a small portion of which, no doubt, would be contributed to Tory Party coffers. Lovely.

It’s not just bonkers, it’s fucking offensive. Vote Tory for more of the same shite, only with the ability then for these absurd ideas to be translated into actual policy. See, the problem is that until you have think tanks that aren’t composed of well-off over-educated people with easy yet well-paid jobs, living in nice houses with manicured lawns, you’re going to keep getting ideas coming to the fore that have no basis upon, nor care for, reality as it is lived by ordinary people.

My suggestion? We abandon all think tanks, and send their members to live on the Falkland Islands. Safely out of harm’s way. Until they start telling the sheep it’s time to migrate. Because sheep can’t swim, and it’s an awfully long way back to Britain from there.