Tories Idea For The North? Live In The South!

So David Cameron's favourite thinktank, one that often gives advice to the Tory Party, has today announced that people in the North should move South if they want a better life, and that regeneration budgets for Northern cities should be stopped.

The report says:

"Central regeneration budgets should be rolled up and local authorities allowed to spend the money as they like, either on helping people to move south or on council tax cuts."

Nice. Get on your bike, Northern proles.

The report says that all the 3 million new homes planned by the government should be built in just three southern cities - London, Oxford and Cambridge.

It says:

"Cities based on highly skilled workers are the most dynamic. Oxford and Cambridge are unambiguously Britain's leading research universities outside London." People in the north should be told bluntly that their best chance of an affluent future is to move south. "No one is suggesting that residents should be forced to move, but we do argue that they should be told the reality of the position."

David Cameron, just starting a tour of seats in the North West today, was quick to rebut the "insane" claims.

Insane of course because the Tories would never dream of building 3 million new homes in London, Oxford and Cambridge...they are all in the South East! What a ridiculous idea! (They'd rather put all the new housing somewhere else.)

Iain Dale is quick to defend the non-Conservative nature of the thinktank in question, by pointing out that "one of the authors of the report, Dr Tim Leunig of the LSE is, in fact, a leading Liberal Democrat supporting economist" - happily ignoring this list suggesting 10 leading Tory supporters are involved in running the thinktank. Coincidence, I'm sure.

In fairness, Chris Grayling, the Tories' shadow minister for Liverpool, said: "This independent report does not reflect Conservative party policy and we do not agree with its conclusions. We wholeheartedly support the regeneration of northern cities."

Of course they support that regeneration. That is why we had to wait till 1997 to get it. :-/

But seriously do these attacks on the Tories really have the ring of truth about them?

This is a party that knows as much about "the North", as it does "the poor". A party that we know actually wants the poor and the young to go and live in the North (and not come down to the South and get in the way of rich Tory grown ups).

A party whose Shadow Cabinet is biased to the South? The party of the Home Counties who does poorly the further North it goes? Surely not.

Maybe I just think this because I am a Northerner. I don't know.
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(Photo Source: Land of Hope and Glory, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Davidcameron.jpg)