It is grim up north, and they’re all the better for it

For decades, the north of England has been steeped in a regionalist cliché that, to be honest, it seems quite proud of. In this it is arguably alone. Cockneys aren’t delighted that everyone sees them as flint-hearted graspers – swindlers who make their

EastEnders counterparts look like fluffy hippies. My fellow West Country people and I are not amused by the suggestion that we’re straw-chewing yokels. The people of the Midlands know there’s more to them than claiming “a kipper tie” is a hot drink with milk.

But quote to a northerner the Victoria Wood sketch “It’s Grim Up North”; tell a Yorkshireman the old adage, “Yorkshiremen say, laughing’s all right for them as likes laughing”; or suggest to a Mancunian that there’s a reason they produced Britain’s gloomiest great band, Joy Division, and you’ll get not a slap, but a wry smile of acknowledgement.

Northerners are rather proud of their reputation. They like to be painted as a bit dour, somewhat unemotional and, let’s face it, not southern. They might not agree with the hope-choking conclusion of the northern classic movie Kes, but secretly they know young Caspar was getting ahead of himself and was probably thinking about moving to Notting Hill and joining the Groucho.

They sympathise with Billy Liar’s girlfriends Barbara and Rita, whose dreams never extended beyond the garden wall, and not rebel Liz, who escaped to Sixties London. (A northern friend claimed he once went home to visit and, in his mum’s front room, opened a can of beer that frothed all over the floor. Instead of complaining about the mess, his mother said: “We’ll have none of your fancy London tricks here.”)

So listening to Andy Burnham, and his claim that in the north people laugh in your face if you say you want to become a doctor, or a lawyer, or learn to read, or some such Home Counties ponciness, one classic northern phrase comes to mind. It’s an expression so succinct it’s not so much a model of restraint as a White Paper in favour of total restriction: “She’s no better than she ought to be.” Such mockery, he insists, kills young ambition.

Burnham is quite wrong, of course; Manchester and the north are full of doctors and lawyers and brain surgeons. But these successful professionals are a different breed from the southern sort: inured to complaint, they were the tall poppies who dared to dare. They had to set their faces against the sneering of their peers and are probably better for it, stronger and more determined than their soft, southern counterparts. In fact, that’s what the idle, indulged, stereotypical children of the south need: a touch of dour northern disapproval. Because the modern world is, let’s face it, no better than it ought to be.