FOR 10 years, Conservative administrations widened the North-South divide by halving local government funding and making savage cuts in welfare spending that disproportionally hit the North. The pandemic is now making this worse. An analysis by the UK2070 Commission shows Britain to be the most inter-regionally unequal large high-income country in the world. The Trussell Trust reports the use of foodbanks is now at 30 times its 2010 level, and over this period healthy life expectancy in the North has fallen. Since the pandemic, unemployment is returning to 1990s rates. It has doubled in northern cities, particularly Hull and Middlesbrough, and is set to get much worse.