And nowhere does this sort of reconfiguration stand a better chance of success than in Atlanta, where an organised and well-funded group of residents is pushing for Buckhead, the city’s wealthiest neighbourhood, to break away from the de facto capital of the South and form a municipality of its own. But while ‘Buckxit’ may be a local campaign to create a city of just 80,000 residents, it also goes to the heart of the challenges facing cities — and the Democrats who run them — across America.

In Buckhead, as in so many places across the country, calls for secession are being driven by one factor: crime. “We feel like we’re living in a war zone,” says Bill White, who is running the campaign. White says the problem has driven many Buckhead residents out of town. “They’re not leaving because of the potholes,” he tells me. “It’s crime, crime, crime.”

Atlanta is one of the many major American cities that has seen violent crime spike in recent years. Between 2019 and 2020, the city’s murder rate rose by 62%. The problem has worsened further this year; as of June, the city’s homicide rate was up by another 58%, while in the first half of 2021, shootings rose by 40%. Meanwhile, the number of arrests has nearly halved. The city’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, once a rising star in the Democratic Party who was even talked about as a possible Vice-Presidential pick for Joe Biden, has been chastened by the crime explosion on her watch and is not seeking re-election.

Were Buckhead to go its own way, it would take with it a fifth of Atlanta’s current population and threaten to do real damage to the city’s finances. According to one estimate, Atlanta would lose 38% of its tax revenue were it to gain city status. David Sjoquist, Professor of Economics at Georgia State University and an expert of public finances, predicts grave fiscal consequences from Buckxit, as well as a tangle of lawsuits over a move that is without precedent; no neighbourhood in Georgia has ever broken off to form its own city. “Atlanta would be much worse off,” he tells me.

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Buckxit, then, has the potential to be fiscally ruinous for a major American city. And Atlanta’s political and business elite are firmly opposed. Bottoms argues that Buckxit would not solve the city’s problems: “Even if an impermeable wall were built around this proposed new city, it would not address the Covid crime wave that Atlanta, the state and the rest of the nation are experiencing,” read one recent statement. “That is why the measure is opposed by many residents and the business community. A better use of this energy would be to work together to address the challenges facing our city, not divide Atlanta.” Every candidate in the crowded field to replace Bottoms agrees.

White, unsurprisingly, paints a rosier picture of a world after Buckxit — both for Buckhead residents and the rest of Atlanta. Much like a Brexiteer shrugging off “Project Fear”, he is dismissive of a political system that he says has become a “cesspool of corruption”. Under a plan put forward by Buckxit campaigners, an independent Buckhead would more than triple police numbers in the area, from 80 to 250, and ensure Buckhead City police were better paid than any other cops in the state. (Atlanta’s police force saw 200 officers retire last year.)

As for the rest of the city, White argues that a safer more prosperous Buckhead is in the interests of the metro area more generally, and would bring more jobs to the city. “If we get this right, we can be a wonderful example,” he says.

But White’s cheery win-win predictions are hard to square with the fiscal reality of a city losing such a huge part of its tax base. And, ultimately, White is open about the fact that he is first and foremost interested in the fate of his community, not the rest of the city. “You know,” White adds, “we’re not doing this to be an example for anybody. We’re doing it because we’re fighting for our lives.”

There are signs that White’s message is resonating. The campaign has so far raised a million dollars and an Atlanta Constitution-Journal/University of Georgia poll recently found that 54% of Buckhead voters support cityhood. Surveys commissioned by the campaign for cityhood also find a stronger majority in favour.

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The man driving the Buckxit train is a colourful newcomer to the Atlanta scene with an unusual political story and a talent for fundraising. Until recently, White, 53, was a fixture on the New York Democratic scene. In 2016, he and his husband Brian Eure were devoted Hillary Clinton supporters, raising money for the Democratic candidate and hosting a $39,500-a-head fundraising dinner in their Chelsea townhouse with Barack Obama as the guest of honour. But since then, White, who relocated from New York to Atlanta three years ago, has been on a journey from Manhattan liberal to MAGA enthusiast.

He admits his flip-flopping has led to accusations of him being “a political whore”. He and his husband have been some of Donald Trump’s most vocal gay supporters and are close to the Trump family. They were reportedly at the White House on election night, and White spent the ensuing weeks lending his voice to the outgoing President’s efforts to overturn the result. (White has subsequently denounced the January 6 Capitol Riot and seems focused on the Buckhead campaign, but his political leanings hardly help his claim that the cityhood effort transcends party politics.)

Notwithstanding White’s politics, “Buckxit” maps awkwardly onto conventional political divides. The upmarket enclave may be the most Republican part of Atlanta, but that’s not saying much. In fact, swings in white affluent Atlanta suburbs such as Buckhead were crucial to Biden’s narrow win in Georgia last year; according to Atlanta Constituion-Journal analysis of the election results, 60% of Buckhead voters opted for Biden in 2020, and 51% backed Hillary Clinton in 2016. “We have people from the Left, from the middle, from the Right,” says White. “We have Biden people, Trump people, people who hate Trump, people who hate Biden. We have environmentalists, we have everyone.”

Buckxit’s critics also point to Atlanta’s racial politics — though this time as a cause for concern. Atlanta as a whole is 51% black, while 82% of Buckhead residents are white. Jim Durnett, CEO of the Buckhead Coalition, a group opposed to cityhood, argues that while he “[doesn’t] believe race is motivating the movement to create a new Buckhead City”, the “racial implications” of Buckxit will be obvious. “Drawing on Atlanta’s rich history of the civil rights movement, we are clearly best when we come together during times of challenge, not when we separate.”

White, however, has little interest in engaging with the possibility that his campaign drives a wedge between Atlanta’s white and black neighbourhoods. Race, he says, is the “go-to narrative” to cancel your idea. “What are your solutions as opposed to saying, ‘This is racist’?” he asks of his campaign’s critics.

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The mechanics of securing popular support for Buckxit are reasonably straightforward. A bill needs to be passed in Georgia’s general assembly and state senate. Both are Republican-held and legislators will presumably be eager to stick it to the opposing party’s city stronghold. Votes on those bills will take place early next year and, if they pass, Buckhead residents will get a say on cityhood in November 2023. White claims that by spring 2023, a mayor and city council could be up and running, spending taxpayers’ money. A slew of complicated rows about settling debts with Atlanta and securing contracts to secure utilities from the city would follow.

But regardless of whether Buckxit becomes a reality, the campaign for cityhood should at the very least be a warning shot across the bows of Atlanta and other American cities, where comparable neighbourhoods might be tempted to try something similar. The success of a modern metropolis depends on persistent vigilance against the threat of crime, public disorder and economic decline. In a year of plague, shutdowns, protests, riots and a violent crime spike, too often political posturing has been prioritised over making sure cities work for all their residents.

For White, though, Buckxit is more than a warning. “The divorce should be something that both sides strive to make smooth, because it’s definitely happening,” he says. “At the moment, barring a lightning bolt or the second coming of Jesus Christ, the writing’s on the wall.”

Summary: older social conservatives living in the North, younger social liberals in the South. “Howay, plus ça change bonny lad” as they say in Hartlepool. It’s just culture subsidence and resettling. Party allegiances are changing, not people’s attitudes. The North’s always been more old-fashioned, the South’s always been more trendy-bendy.

Endless pieces on “The Problem For Labour” like to rummage around in the debris of a party destroyed first by a Tory Parliamentary majority, then by murderous national opinion polls. Whoever it is leading the Labour party at the moment keeps telling interviewers that it’s a national issue — how can Labour win back the trust of Britain’s voters? But maybe the big picture is itself the problem.

All this hyphenated North-South/Left-Right jive is so last-cench, daddio. It’s useful journalistic shorthand, but I wonder how many voters in our new atomised electorate think in those terms. We elect our MPs to represent us in Westminster, of course. But they increasingly seem more valuable to us as constituency activists — save the hospital, stop the fracking, help the homeless, amplify local voices. I know, I know #NotAllMPs — the useless clump of nothing in my neighbouring constituency firmly believes that food-bank dependence is a lifestyle choice. Shock reveal: he’s a Tory MP.

There’s a lot of huffing and puffing about how humbled, chastened Labour won’t get back in for years, and how a party can’t do anything unless it’s in government. But can’t it? Until Andy Burnham became mayor of Manchester he was known chiefly as the runner-up to Corbyn in the Labour leadership election of 2015, and before that as a hapless yet versatile shadow cabinet plug-in. Now look at him. He’s King of the North, defying the Johnson government so theatrically he should be wearing a pelt cloak. Right now he could ride a stallion into St Peter’s Square, declare war on Bollinger Politics and march a Manc army down the M6 singing Is This The Way To Amarillo.

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One of the few genuinely brilliant things to somehow swerve out of the path of the Government’s lethal, careening coronavirus clown car was the power of local authorities and NHS Trusts to work together efficiently in an emergency. The infrastructure somehow survives, like a World War Two operations bunker. As the private sector profited, dithered and wilted in the Great British Covid Call-Up, teams of local volunteers pitched in for a remarkable community effort of civic and public sector can-doery.

Westminster seems more remote from ordinary lives than ever. Food poverty and NHS waiting lists may be national talking points but they’re local problems. You feel that the new slogan for Labour, with its unique network of constituency activists, ought to be Think Local, Act Local. It’s national issues versus local issues, and Labour should build on its grassroots base.

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I say national versus local but let’s be honest, it’s London vs the Rest. “London” is shorthand for England in the same way that “Pyongyang” is North Korea, except London obviously has more Korean restaurants. London is Britain. London is Great Britain. Most of all, Great Britain is London. The M25 might as well be a moat of fire.

As someone who moved from London to “The North” in 1988 — passing a lot of people going the other way, incidentally — I can confirm that there’s no such thing as “The North”. Lancaster, where I’ve lived for 33 years, has little in common with Middlesbrough or Berwick or Blackpool. My adopted home — a university city with a Green council leader — is quite different from the seaside town of Morecambe six miles away, the setting for ITV’s gritty drama The Bay. Which is, trivia fans, created and written by Lancaster’s Daragh Carville. Yet another example of northern “trickle-up” cultural economics.

I’m not saying there aren’t some comically enduring tribal rivalries up here. On this side of the Pennines we’re required by folklore to pretend all Yorkshiremen are tight, humourless narcissistic bastards. This apparently caused the Wars of the Roses, ruining lives as recently as the 15th Century. People in the border town of Carlisle can be ultra-English or secretly Scottish, which is why it’s safer to avoid eye-contact with anyone there. Liverpool is a very special, deeply emotional place to be for Liverpudlians.

“What’s London even for these days?” I wheeze to myself. Lunch, obviously. Nothing beats a long, boozy Soho lunch. Meetings of course, until you tell people you actually live 250 miles north of London — then it’s either a Zoom or they’re paying for lunch.

People work there still, but fewer than before Covid’s WFH-variant. People live there too obviously, but as far as I can make out the rental sector seems to function as a tenanted version of an apple press for venal cyborg landlords.

God, even looking at London’s cluttered skyline depresses me. It used to inspire, now it merely laughs drunkenly at us, all leering and aggressive. Goethe said that architecture was “frozen music”, a phrase architects themselves elevated to “petrified music”. Art captured in stone and glass. A lot of what we see on the London skyline now is more what you’d call “concretised overseas investment” or “honeycombed tax dodge” or “commodified drug money”. Once the church built landmarks; now gangsters do.

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We couldn’t have moved North in the Eighties without the fax machine, my liberation. Our first one cost a grand and a half, which in those days was an arm and a leg. However, it allowed me, a freelance writer and journalist, to fax my drivel in from anywhere. “But everything’s HERE,” our London friends mewled. I mean, everything was there if you were a childless double-earning couple in your twenties. We had two young children and it felt like the right time to resettle. Had some family in the north-west, drifted into living in Lancaster, where we’ve been ever since. “Once you leave London you’ll never be able to move back” people said, with an almost undetectable satisfaction in their voice. That seemed fine at the time and feels positively reassuring now.

My 35-year-old lungs seemed untroubled by all the poisonous Marlboro fags and the poisonous London fugs. Now, with 68 year-old bagpipes compromised by years of abuse, I’m very grateful to live somewhere with clean, sparkling air. Children have flourished here, as grandchildren flourish now. In Lancaster there’s a green space round every corner. It’s a weird city; where we live you can hear trains on one side and cows on the other.

We’re conditioned to think of London as the future, as the place to be. It’s been a bellwether for so long, apparently charting our wellness and confidence through rising house prices. While conditions for the poor deteriorate, in every property hotspot the Foxtons equity monitor whizzes silently round and round and round, like a gas meter in winter. Oh look, that three-bed’s gone up a grand since the start of this sentence.

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And yet, in the mid-20th Century, as in the Eighties, London was the past — a place to escape from. The Dan Dare vision of 21st-Century London was exciting to see as a child of the Fifties: the very air was a road busy with futuristic bubble cars, and every building looked like a Hilton hotel. But the London I was born into — austerity, overcrowding, bomb sites, poisonous air — was a dead end. As young families moved out of the Smoke, skint singles moved in.

Imagine. Once upon a time you could run away to London and live cheaply. Every struggling artist and musician I knew in the Seventies was on the dole. Good luck getting any goal-assistance now. Perhaps today’s hostile environment for piss-takers with the nerve to be poor, unverified or working class might, over the coming decade, create new centres of creative and economic gravity in the North, and expand existing ones. Why not?

When we moved up in ’88, Lancaster-Euston by train often took the best part of four hours. These days it’s two and a half and you can work on a laptop, stroll into town for a meeting and a lunch and still be home for dinner. London for a visitor is bloody GREAT. Also, with global warming, the summers up here in a generation or so will be as hot as summers are in London now. Bask up here, or boil down there? Now that IS a North-South divide.