Not something I ever imagined myself saying but Steve Taylor is exactly right about EU funding for the North. The lie about the south getting more was a spread by the Brexit/Reform party and seems, even now to have some traction. Here are the actual numbers:
As to the north and Midlands being unliveable hellholes of deprivation, as someone who travels regularly to both areas, I can assure you this is not true. The longer term trend was for many post industrial areas to see continued decline as younger, university educated people moved away ususally to the south and this squeezed the vitality out of many areas. However, since Covid, if not before, this trend is reversing somewhat. Remote working opportunities and ridiculously high rents have meant that the majority of our brightest and best young people are no longer moving to London. The gentrification process that London saw is starting to happen in larger cities such as Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester with some formerly deprived areas now becoming desirable due to the quality of the housing stock. Smaller towns are also benefiting because of the quality of life they can offer particularly to professional people. This is probably just the start of a longer term trend, and although very bad news for London, is good for the country overall as economic growth had become extremely unbalanced.