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Brexit has revealed the Northern Powerhouse as a colonial enterprise

The Tories’ “Northern Powerhouse” has always relied on historical tropes about bootstrap industrialisation. But it now owes more to the Highland Clearances and Peterloo.

By Steve Hanson
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Manchester_Town_Hall copy.jpg
Manchester_Town_Hall copy.jpg

Image: Manchester Town Hall, Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

So James Wharton, the Northern Powerhouse minister, has been caught avoiding the north. No doubt he’ll be back up north again like a shot. It was on the cards anyway, as Theresa May reached for it recently, putting it back on the agenda.

Theresa May's recent reaffirmation of the Northern Powerhouse agenda (a term coined by George Osborne and then fully endorsed by his disaster twin Cameron) is unsurprising.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0