Don’t make the North miserable in an effort to emulate London

Money is not everything, or so people with enough of it like to say. It is a slightly trite phrase which is simultaneously blindingly obvious and too often forgotten. There is also some economic truth in it.

The chart below shows incomes and life satisfaction by region. It is not what you might expect: higher earnings seem to have very little impact on life satisfaction.

Some of this reflects different prices. Northern Ireland is a cheaper place to live than London, for instance, so money goes further in rural Ulster than in the City.

But the overall message remains powerful: all that cash does not make Londoners happy. They are far and away the most miserable of all the inhabitants of these islands.

The Northern Irish are the most chirpy despite the smallest incomes.

Those in the North East of England, the East Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber and the South East all report similar levels of happiness despite incomes trailing London’s by as much as £150 per week, or almost £8,000 per year.

This has serious implications for Boris Johnson.

The Prime Minister has plans to “level up” the country. No longer will London be the favoured destination for investment and jobs. A deliberate strategy is being formed to divert funds elsewhere.

But how to make sure that extra money does not turn jolly geordies or laughing Liverpudlians into complaining cockneys?

After all, it would be an underwhelming result if northerners found themselves with fatter wallets but emptier or more frustrating lives.

Yael Selfin, chief economist at KPMG UK and the compiler of the graph, recommends better infrastructure as key.

Central to Londoners’ woes are high prices – and property prices in particular – and congestion.

The popularity of an ancient city means millions of commuters must battle through Victorian railways to cross streets with Roman foundations to get to their highly paid jobs.

Those journeys can be expensive and slow, wasting time which could more valuably be spent on work

‘Londoners are far and away the most miserable of all the inhabitants of these islands’

or leisure, and creating daily tension and misery.

Attracting those workers to other cities instead might make them happier, if those cities can generate the good jobs Londoners want.

But it is also a sure way to infuriate locals if they find themselves priced out of homes by wealthy southerners moving north, or packed more tightly on to buses and trains by the newcomers. It might be called the “London trap”.

The answer is to build infrastructure as a central part of the proposed rebalancing of the economy. Better transport and more housing will improve northern cities for their current inhabitants, and give them more room for growth if and when they, rather than London, become a big draw for migrating workers.

There is no need to make the North miserable in the name of helping it become more like the capital.