It’s grim up north?

What does a story about a widening north-south divide have to do with the politics of immigration?

The ignorance displayed by a couple of individuals in a story in today’s Observer made me laugh. Travelodge have apparently conducted a survey of British adults which suggests that over 7 million Britons have never ventured across the north-south divide. Further, they say that just one in five southerners have been to Liverpool, and under one in twenty have been to Newcastle or Leeds.

In the newspaper report on this, one person interviewed said:

“It rains a lot more and is much colder. People from the north are a bit behind the times. I doubt the nightlife is anywhere near as good and I imagine the pubs are all a bit grimy and old fashioned. The north is less advanced than the south.”

Okay, no one is suggesting that the range and diversity of restaurants, bars, galleries and cultural attractions in any northern city can match London, but clearly the picture painted by this individual is grossly inaccurate.

But what has this to do with politics? As an excellent editorial in the same paper points out, Gordon Brown has recently injected further life into the debate about immigration when in a recent speech he suggested that citizenship is a right that that came with responsibilities. Also, the government this week released a green paper outlining plans for a stepping stone approach for those seeking British citizenship.

Both these ideas imply a concern about social cohesion in Britain as a result of immigration. But as the story about the north-south divide shows, divisions in Britain quite often have nothing to do with immigration. So what is the government going to do about these? Probably not a great deal. But of course talking tough on immigration seems like a much less difficult method of picking up votes.