Andy Burnham is a prime minister from the North who has just appointed a heavily Northern Cabinet and is moving parts of Downing Street to Manchester. According to research for the Economist, voters in Northern England are responding positively to his rise to power. The question now is whether any of the opposition parties are willing to exploit a potential Southern backlash.

The Tories have the most to gain by becoming the party of the South. Of their 117 MPs, only 13 represent Northern English constituencies. That’s a far cry from the 2019 general election, when Boris Johnson made gains across the Red Wall. But having comprehensively betrayed that mandate, it will be a long time before a Conservative breakthrough takes place there again.

In any case, Reform UK is now the main opposition to Labour across the North, which is why an overtly Southern strategy won’t appeal to Nigel Farage and his colleagues. What’s more, as a party of the populist Right, Reform will be torn between condemning Burnham’s economic populism and competing with it.

No such hesitation for the Tories, though. Expect full-throated opposition to further tax rises, increased borrowing and Burnham’s mission to roll back Thatcherism. There are several ways in which this ideological battle could take on a regional dimension. Potentially the most explosive is if Burnham and his Chancellor, John Healey, shift the tax burden onto Southern homeowners — for instance, by adding extra Council Tax bands and exporting the revenues Northward.

Another factor driving the Tories towards a South-focused strategy is the electoral arithmetic of multi-party politics under a first-past-the-post electoral system. This rewards parties for concentrating their votes regionally — just like the Liberal Democrats in 2024 who won 72 seats on just 12% of the national vote.

It’s an example that serves as an inspiration to Tory strategists. But it’s also a serious obstacle because a quick glance at the electoral map shows a “Yellow Wall” stretching from London to Devon. To become the party of the South, the Conservatives will have to compete with the other party of the South, the Lib Dems.

For Tory dissidents such as Gavin Barwell, this is why the Conservatives need to move back to the centre ground of British politics. Going off Kemi Badenoch’s purge of the Tory wets, she evidently doesn’t agree. Indeed, by removing the whip from Barwell, she has reinforced her party’s Right-wing credentials. And yet she’s also made a point of ruling out any possibility of a deal with Reform.

This only makes sense if her approach is to win back Lib Dem and Labour-held seats by persuading Reform supporters not to split the Right-wing vote, while at the same time seeking to defend Conservative-held marginals against Reform by attracting tactical support from Left-leaning voters desperate to stop Farage.

Yes, this is having it both ways, but the Conservatives might get away with it if a) they’re less disliked than either Burnham or Farage and b) seen as the best way of stopping either Burnham or Farage. And in which part of the country are those conditions most likely to be met? The true blue South, of course.

Obviously, regionalism is no way to win a majority at the next election. However, the Tory priority right now is survival as a significant political force. And if that means becoming the SNP of the Home Counties, then so be it.

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Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.

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