Why we are all performative northerners now

Back in 2015, in the middle of what would turn out to be a second unsuccessful bid for Labour party leadership, Andy Burnham was asked to share his favourite choice of biscuit with the readers of parenting website Mumsnet. His answer? “I don’t have a sweet tooth and don’t eat biscuits,” he said. “But give me a beer and chips and gravy any day…”

Sound the salt of the Earth klaxon! This was an answer that practically screamed “Ey up!” An answer that was ready to tell you off for leaving the lights on, because it “looks like Blackpool illuminations in here”. An answer that was ready to tell you about its mad nights out at the Hacienda, before FAC 51 got turned into flats.

Essentially, it was an answer that wanted to shout about just how very northern this then-former cabinet minister was – and showed that Burnham was more than willing to veer into the territory of self-parody in order to play up those northern roots.

And it was an approach that was quite easy to mock. A joke that flew around Westminster during that leadership campaign was typical: “What’s Andy Burnham’s favourite flavour of crisps?” it went. The punchline? “Coal.”

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Quite frankly, it all smacked of performative northernness, the sort of faintly stereotype-infused approach to England’s geography that reduces regional differences to debates about whether the final meal of the day should be referred to as “tea” or “dinner”, or what we should call a white bread roll (Barm cake? Cob?) and which one of these choices is more authentic, cheery and real.

We’ve probably all encountered a performative northerner in our time. Those people whose take on local identity boils down to a few old clichés about chatting to fellow passengers on buses being some kind of moral virtue, and feigning outrage at how expensive a beer costs in that there London compared to “up North” (oh, it’s always “up North”, not “in the North”).

This is all despite the fact that the person putting on said outrage has probably spent the last 15 years living in Zone Four, and that even when they lived north of Birmingham, their life wasn’t exactly all flat caps, ferrets and, erm, Fred from Corrie. They’re always willing to speak as a representative of “the North” – even though all their impressions of life there are decades out of date, and shot through with a “we do things differently here”-type nostalgia. Their accent, they say, starts to come out after a few pints.

The most noxious form of performative northerness? That dubious honour, in my humble opinion, goes to those spoken word poems that seem to get commissioned to accompany adverts for building societies, or to commemorate the opening of some event or festival that has decamped beyond the M25 for a year to tick some sort of wider participation box.

Some bloke who once listened to John Cooper Clarke – or at least, the Arctic Monkeys’ cover of “I Wanna Be Yours” – starts doing vaguely northern-themed free association. They’ll list an increasingly random assortment of words and concepts – cotton! Well dressing! The Metro Centre! The Birkenhead tunnel! Fred Dibnah! – before ending on some cheesy truism about how we have it hard up here, but we pull through.

The “professional northerner” schtick, be it in poetry or prose, has always come across as a bit naff. It tends to make people cringe there just as much as it raises eyebrows in the south. Indeed, I sometimes cringe a bit when I find myself leaning into my northern side (“Coat for a night out? Absolutely not, I’m northern,” etc etc). Like Burnham, I’ve found myself falling into that trap more and more since I left London for my home city.

So, while I can understand the temptation to go heavy on this particular part of your identity – and, just to tick off another performative cliché, being northern is bloody great – I fear some of Burnham’s more performatively northern traits might actually become a hindrance. It was all just so blatant. Did he have to go for a run in an Everton shirt? And talk about his favourite Smiths songs on Instagram reels?

Earlier this month, as Burnham bopped his head along to New Order’s “True Faith” during his coronation as Labour leader, channelling what I can only refer to as big “northern dad at a wedding” energy. Now he’s rating pub snacks on social media with chancellor John Healey (birthplace: Wakefield, the city that also gave us the icon Jane McDonald).

He’s getting TikTok fan edits spliced with nostalgic grainy photos from Nineties Madchester. His clothes – the black T-shirts, the workwear jackets – are being analysed in The New York Times; on this side of the Atlantic, The Times has been pondering whether northern men are in fact much better dressed than their southern counterparts.

And yes, he’s easy to mock – see comedian Russell Kane’s front-facing camera videos, in which he plays Burnham as a bloke so “normal” that he’s never ever heard of sourdough, thank you very much – but, for now , it seems to be being done in a relatively good-natured way.

Performative northerness, it seems, has entered the mainstream. And it’s working. I should caveat that I don’t believe that Burnham’s northerness is something that is entirely put on. We are talking about a man who has always tended to serve constituencies in the North West. And God knows no one would opt into the misery that comes with supporting Everton unless they were born into that particular trauma. And others will almost certainly seek to capitalise on the so-called “Burnham bounce” by doing something similar.

Expect to see all the cabinet members with constituencies above the Watford gap clamouring to rank Smiths lyrics on socials with the PM. Expect spads recently dispatched to No 10 North to start wearing Arc’teryx and Adanola in their downtime – and to begin banging on about how you can “afford so much more up here” (the words no actual northerner ever wants to hear). Expect more grumbles about the West Coast Mainline.

The performative northerners are in charge now – and they’re mad for it.

Seven ways to spot a performative northerner in the wild…