Beach volleyball in Morecambe Bay? An Olympics of the north sounds like a winner

Our sport-loving PM is willing to risk a bitter north v south furore, all for the sake of table tennis in Teesside

As someone who barely understands their own finances, let alone the country’s, I will admit that budget day doesn’t always register with me. Perhaps if there were outre outfits or horse-drawn carriages involved, like there are at the state opening of parliament, I’d get into it, but the only accessory of note is a briefcase and it doesn’t even glow mysteriously when you open it.

This week, however, the chancellor of the exchequer did manage to catch my attention. Somewhere amid the household energy payments and defence spending, he slipped in a cheeky £7m to assess a possible Olympic bid for the north of England. That’s only a preliminary step and a fraction of the cost of any actual bid – Tokyo and Paris spent more than £50m on theirs. Still, it’s enough to put thoughts in people’s heads of beach volleyball in Morecambe Bay or a British eight rowing to victory along the Tyne.

The idea has gained traction since February, when a group of mayors from the northern cities first wrote to the culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, asking her to bring the Olympics to their neighbourhood. Three months later, Nandy had thrown her support behind the proposal – “It’s time the Olympics came north” – and announced an initial assessment. The new funds will support a more comprehensive one, with a view to hosting in the 2040s. And it surely doesn’t hurt to have a recently installed, sport-loving prime minister, who was previously mayor of Greater Manchester.

Andy Burnham is in the early, giving stages of his premiership and he can generate a lot of goodwill by spending a comparatively small sum exploring the option. The “detailed feasibility study” by UK Sport isn’t due until 2029, but you can still expect it to stoke a lot of excitement in the meantime. There has already been positive reaction to the news, not least from the former boxer Luke Campbell, the 2012 Olympic bantamweight champion who became Reform UK’s mayor of Hull and East Yorkshire last year.

Campbell has been a vocal supporter of the plan; he has also been on the ropes recently, with police investigating allegations – which he denies – that he showed naked pictures of himself to a female member of staff. Still, he came out of his corner to praise the funding. “I’m proud to be working with other northern mayors and leaders to get this idea taken seriously,” said Campbell, calling it “a legacy worth aiming for”.

London’s mayor, however, will be far less impressed. Sadiq Khan has been talking about bringing the Games back to the capital for the past five years. His office has been actively consulting the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and working up a plan to reuse 2012 venues to create “the greenest Games ever”. Khan has lobbied for it with Conservative and Labour governments. “The great thing to remember is the power of sport,” he said on the 10th anniversary of the London Games. “It’s above party politics, it’s above north versus south.”

Unfortunately, it seems he may be wrong about that. Perhaps Khan needs to remember that North v South has been a fundamental part of England’s sporting landscape since the Victorians first codified its favourite physical pursuits. Some of the earliest fixtures in England were literally played between North and South, be they in football, cricket, water polo or draughts. Even rugby union had North v South games, before the establishing of two separate codes would create a geographical divide of its own. It’s one more aspect of the divide baked in to the country’s social history.

And as John Healey’s £7m demonstrates, an Olympic bid is also, very much, politics. In this case, the politics of regional disparity – from the failure of levelling up to the devolution revolution, from No 10 North to Pride in Place. Whether the members of the IOC will vote for swimming in Sheffield, modern pentathlon in Manchester and table tennis in Teesside remains, for now, entirely moot. The government’s feasibility study answers the call of a more immediate voting base, who care as much about the promise of outside investment and regional infrastructure that an Olympics may provide as they do about the fortnight’s fiesta itself. And hey, how about that mythical high-speed rail line, while you’re at it?

It should be said that there’s nothing wrong with ambition or even just testing the waters. If an Olympics bid did come off, it would be a more than fitting way to celebrate the north’s prodigious athletic legacy. And that’s something to which Burnham, an Everton season-ticket holder and former president of the Rugby Football League, has shown a longstanding commitment. Indeed, he has a literal track record: last month, he became the first serving prime minister to complete the Great North Run (in a very respectable sub-two-hour time).

For now, however, the whole thing remains little more than a theoretical possibility and a politicians’ talking point. Perhaps we can find some other North v South contests to fixate on in the meantime. Unfortunately, the promised all-star footballing fixture at the Valley last year – with the North managed by Robbie Fowler and the South managed by Harry Redknapp – never materialised. But I see that England lacrosse has revived the fixture this year, after a hiatus of four decades.