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It was December 13, the morning after Boris Johnson won a landslide victory and destroyed the Labor Red Wall.
The new prime minister stood on the steps of Number 10 and declared that his “One Nation” government had won parts of the country that “had never returned a Conservative MP for 100 years.”
He promised to level up the country and pay the voters who gave him that 80-seat majority.
But ten months later, standing in central Manchester on Tuesday afternoon, Labor Mayor of the Underground, Andy Burnham, delivered this forceful response to those promises by giving his side of why talks had collapsed over a financial deal. for an imminent local lockdown.
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“What we have seen today is a deliberate leveling off,” said Burnham, who failed to agree on a financial support package for 2.8 million people about to be subjected to an even tighter lockdown on Friday.
“I don’t think we can overcome this pandemic by crushing people. We have to take them with us, not crush their spirit.”
If we were all together in the first shutdown, the regional focus is increasingly separating us, exacerbating the north-south divide and old grievances between the Westminster government and communities that feel ignored.
This is partly about politics.
The government, desperately trying to tread that fine line between protecting public health and keeping the economy going, is dividing England on different levels, trying to keep the economy open in, for example, East Anglia or Cornwall, while Liverpool, Lancashire and Manchester have to close. down.
Inevitably, it will create tensions as COVID politics becomes more nuanced, complicated and controversial.
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But these divisions are also exacerbated by the policy of negotiating deal-by-deal without an agreed framework and goals. The central government has the finances and all the cards.
“It’s grim,” said a regional leader as the Greater Manchester talks collapsed on Tuesday. “When did the government change from ‘we will do whatever it takes’ to ‘accept whatever we give them?’
“It’s a massive change from the beginning of the year, when they were asking people to do really difficult things. They are trying to take regional action cheaply.”
And it is fueling division and discord. In Liverpool last week, local people affected by the toughest restrictions told me that they believed it was because the Conservatives could not win Liverpool’s votes that they did not care about their fate.
In Manchester, those who worked under Level 2 restrictions for almost 12 weeks were exhausted.
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When the capital and the rest of the country closed in March, the support packages seemed limitless, but when the North is the most affected by the second wave, that level of support is not there.
From the government’s perspective, he went as far as he could. This local plan was carried over to other agreements that were being negotiated. Mr Burnham had asked for £ 90 million to support workers and businesses who were unemployed due to the new restrictions, before settling on £ 65 million as the minimum he could accept.
But for the prime minister, it was £ 5 million too much. On the call with Burnham he was adamant that he could not exceed £ 60 million because he could not be seen to give Greater Manchester a better deal than other deals delivered over the past week.
“We want to do more, but for the sake of justice, the deal has to be in line with the agreements reached with Lancashire and Merseyside,” Johnson said when announcing his decision to impose the strictest lockdown on Greater Manchester from noon on Friday. , at a press conference shortly after the collapse of the talks.
But the prime minister also sowed confusion, refusing five times to verbally honor his commitment to give £ 60 million to workers and businesses; instead, he said this was a matter of negotiation, as he invited Burnham to speak.
So the money could be there, but Burnham has to capitulate and accept the final offer from Number 10.
Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has been negotiating a financial package with the government.
Amid the political row, 2.8 million people face tighter restrictions at the end of the week and still don’t know what additional support they might receive.
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, expressed the sentiment of Labor MPs representing the people of the region when he called the government’s behavior “petty, vindictive, insensitive.”
“The prime minister may think he is punishing politicians. In fact, he is punishing the people of Greater Manchester,” he said.
The government was trying to unravel the web Tuesday night, and Hancock confirmed in the House of Commons that the £ 60 million was still on the table when he invited local leaders to work with the government.
But how much damage has been done? This was the Conservative Party that “won” parts of the North just 10 months ago, now being denounced in central Manchester for leaving behind one of the heart of the North cities and its people.
“We are fighting,” Burnham told the cameras and the makeshift crowd that had gathered. “This pandemic has hit the North harder than elsewhere because of entrenched poverty in the north of England, because Westminster has neglected the north of England for too many years.”
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Locking up different parts of the country was a policy that was always going to create divisions and sow discord. That is why the politics of the negotiations were so critical.
A framework for deciding not only how regions entered and exited the tiers, but the financial support package that would be put in place, perhaps would have removed some of the pure politics from the negotiations.
As it stands, the politics of the deals have deeply undermined politics, and that has implications for public health.
It also has implications for Boris Johnson and his new “Red Tories” band.
Now they call Andy Burnham the “King of the North”. It was the crown that Johnson believed he had won in those general elections.
