On London Extra: Burnhamism means Londonism

The would-be Prime Minister would be lost without the capital's economy and voters. Plus Barnet Council leadership excitement, another Green goes in Lambeth and more

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Andy Burnham’s coronation as “King of the North” and his veneration by some as Labour’s plain-spoken socialist prince across the water has owed a lot to his complaining about “London”.

I put the name in quotes because the Mayor of Greater Manchester’s deployment of it has been intended to evoke a stereotype about the city and its people as uniformly prosperous and given preferential treatment in the allocation of public funds at the expense of other cities and regions, such as his.

Knocking this straw man “London” has been good for Burnham’s electoral business, appealing to the resentments of his base by identifying not just a city but a set of values and associations in the populist imagination to fuel a politics of northern grievance.

Nigel Farage does the same thing in a different way, in his case wooing Middle England by pointing a finger at a capital it suits him to misrepresent as “fallen” because of immigration and crime, which he indirectly seeks to link.