Theresa May has now got involved in the political hot potato that is The North / South divide.

For many in the current government, the only good thing coming from up North is the HS2 upgrade and that this is simply a way of getting clever people down South quicker.

Finally it’s been decided that the place somewhere above Birmingham but possibly circumnavigating Stoke-on-Trent, is in need of its own cabinet member.

Willy Eckerslike, MP for Ramsbottom, somewhere May thought was made up or possibly in Emmerdale, was surprised by his appointment.

A Rochdale Herald reporter caught up with him after he’d placed his final bet at Bellevue dog track. “Well bugger me, I’ll go t’t’ foot of our stairs! ” He frothed. “Last time when I went up Parliament and I were nattering to our PM, I invited her for a pie, mash ‘n’ gravy tea up ‘ere and she looked at me like I’d grown another ‘ead! I said, ‘For tea, love. Tea!'”

It’s reported that May asked her husband, while he was taking out the bins, as to why it was referred to as tea, rather than supper or dinner. “People up North generally have no teeth, therefore tea is the only thing they can have.”

The appointment has been met with cross party support and is the biggest shock the nation has seen in a cabinet reshuffle since a man who still calls Zimbabwe Rhodesia was made Foreign Secretary.

A spokesman for No 10 told The Rochdale Herald: “It’s important that the chap whose job it is to studiously ignore the needs of the wildlings has his finger on the pulse.”