A Great Train Robbery is occurring oop north. The revelation that nine of TransPennine Express’s 70 railway carriages are to be reallocated to boost Chiltern Rail services in the south-east has left northerners reeling in anger. The carriages will be taken out from the Manchester to Leeds line, which is a vital chunk of regional economic infrastructure, enabling commutes to the two biggest cities in the north from the surrounding rural and suburban areas.

My own town of Stalybridge, which I represent as a councillor, hosts a significant station on the line, and I can personally vouch for the unacceptable overcrowding at peak times at present. Local campaigners have long been calling for an increase in the rolling stock to relieve the enormous pressure on the line. The suggestion that rail bosses are instead to reduce the capacity by 13 per cent is utterly infuriating. As it is, journeys are far from comfortable and accessible. In the north, the average age of the rolling stock is 24 years old, compared with half that, 12 years, on the C2C London to Essex line. Many of our northern trains are, like me, thirty-something years old. Investment is direly needed.

CarriageGate may be the most literal example of the coalition government robbing from the north to refurbish the south, but it is far from an isolated incidence.

Today’s budget sees the announcement of further housing and infrastructure projects for the south, with little positive news for those of us further up the country. 15,000 new homes in Kent and a £500m transport and housing package for Cambridge are not matched by comparative commitments for the ‘desolate’ north. The chancellor declared his a ‘budget for the makers, the doers and the savers’. I would say it is a budget for the home counties.

Eric Pickles has dealt the north blows as severe as Osborne’s. Real terms council cuts in northern – largely Labour – metropolitan boroughs have been markedly more brutal than those to Conservative authorities in the south. Between 2010-11 and 2014-15, Manchester has seen cuts of more than £284 per person, while in the same period, Mole Valley in Tory Sussex has lost less than £18 a head. The scale of budget bashing in the north is not only leading to closures of valued services such as libraries, children’s centres, and leisure centres, it is impacting on street cleanliness and safely, care and respite for the vulnerable, and ultimately, on jobs and local spending power. Local government here is at a tipping point, and a Conservative victory in 2015 would almost certainly see that tipping point give way to toppling point.

Beyond self-evidently unfair local government settlements, the overall proportion of government spending on the north-west, north-east and Yorkshire and Humber has also dropped dramatically and disproportionately by comparison with the south. The total impact of the coalition’s austerity measures on Blackpool, for example, amounts to a shocking £914 reduction in local disposable income per working age adult. By the same measure, residents of Tory Guildford have lost out by only £263. Sharing the pain? It strikes me that pockets are considerably lighter in Labour’s heartlands in the north. The fear is the irretrievable extent to which this could continue should we fail to secure a Labour majority in just 14 months time.

Of course, economic inequality between the industrial north and the information services driven south is nothing new. Nor, admittedly, is the politicisation of geographic winners and losers from government spending. I don’t doubt that many of the earliest and biggest winners from projects such as Labour’s flagship Building Schools for the Future were the northern, Labour metropolitan boroughs that have now been hung out to dry now the electoral pendulum has swung the other way.

However, studying the figures, I am starting to consider the enormity of the devastation that is currently being inflicted on the north as tantamount to discrimination.

As a feminist but also as a professional equalities adviser, I watched with interest when in 2010 the Fawcett Society took the unprecedented step of taking Cameron’s government to court over the unjust impact of its then budget on women, who it climbed would bear £5.8bn of the £8bn cuts outlined. The manoeuvre led to the government admitting it had not met its legal obligations to fully assess the impact of its proposed cuts on women, and expressing regret for its failure to do so. The episode almost certainly served to steer the government away from victimising women quite as transparently in its subsequent budgets (although, of course, they have not come off well).

Economists out there, could you crack out your calculators and accurately estimate what percentage of the tens of billions the government has cut from public spending in approaching four years in office have hailed from the north? Because I feel a legal challenge coming on.

Geography needs to become more like an equalities issue. It is time to challenge the government on regional victimisation with a similar level of vigour and organisation that we would in the case of as explicit and tangible an attack on gender, race, sexuality or disability. It is time to debate whether we should, or could, enshrine in law that you should be protected from economic discrimination on the grounds of where you live. People of the north: we need a good lawyer.

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Claire Reynolds is a councillor on Tameside council, a former adviser at 10 Downing Street and an elected member of the Progress strategy board. She tweets @mrs_creynolds

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