Bagehot: A sticky pitch for the Tories AT HALFTIME in the first semi-final of the Rugby League World Cup, on November 26th, the England fans thronging Wembley Stadium were in good heart. Their team of brawny Yorkies and Lancastrians was fighting hard against a tough New Zealand side. The atmosphere was exhilarating. The only cloud on this bright autumn day was the beer. Lager! They've only got bloody lager!" said Phil, an aggrieved Mancunian sipping at the urine-coloured fluid. Don't they know northerners drink bitter? Northerners also like grumbling. In the bowels of Wembley, where the fans of northern England's trademark game had gathered for beer and burgers, came a merry chatter of complaint. Lost momentum, haven't they? Have to crack on second-half," "Bloody Kiwis!" And, inevitably: "£4.70 a pint! I can get this for £1.70 in Oldham/Wakefield/Castleford/St Helens. Britain's main team sports, football, cricket and rugby, have always reflected the big tensions in society: conflicts over wealth and class, of north against south. Only rugby has been rent by them. It happened in the late 19th century, when a class-infused row over the compensatory payments being made to working-class players - so-called "broken time" payments - led to a breakaway by northern clubs and the emergence of a rival code. Rugby union, the established game, remained amateur, patronised by royalty, played by public schools and strongest in and around Edinburgh, London, Wales, the Midlands and south-west. The upstart rugby league was semi-professional, working-class and concentrated in the pit towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire. So it has remained. Despite repeated efforts to spread the code - with some success abroad - the professional British version is almost exclusive to the "M62 corridor" connecting Liverpool in the west with Hull in the east. It also retains its original working-class culture, in which union and the south are viewed with a mixture of bafflement, condescension and resentment. The geographical divide between rugby union and rugby league does not perfectly correspond to the divide between Britain's post-industrial north and services-oriented south (south Wales, by this economic yardstick, ought to play league - as it probably would have done if rugby's 19th-century rulers had not turned a blind eye to the broken-time payments Welsh players were also collecting). But it is close enough to find in rugby an illustration of two big trends in Britain. The first is the ever-growing economic dominance of the south. The second, more troublingly, is the cultural and political gulf this is driving. Not long ago, professional rugby league was richer, faster and better run than amateur union. During the 1980s and early 1990s league clubs often poached union stars. Appropriately, many came from south Wales. But in 1995 rugby union turned professional, and the exodus was reversed. Union clubs, especially London-based ones such as Saracens, Harlequins and Wasps, attracted rich investors. In prosperous times union salaries soared; so did the former amateur code's popularity, on the back of its more frequent and intense international contests. The turncoats returned to union; to the horror of league fans, home-grown stars followed them. In 2007 Chris Ashton, a 20-year-old prodigy, left Wigan, the greatest league club, for union and a tenfold wage rise. In an effort to compete, league clubs became savvier. Yet their efforts have been blighted by cultural resistance - union fans tend to be as unfairly rude about league as vice versa - and inclement economics. The wealth gap between north and south is growing: between 1997 and 2012 the median wage in Wigan rose by 38%, compared with over 60% in much of London. No wonder league crowds are smaller, ticket prices lower and investors scarcer than in union. Last year the code's superleague tournament attracted no sponsor. On November 20th the London Broncos - the only top league side outside the north - announced plans to go into administration. Instead of spreading or, as some had predicted, fusing with union, top-flight rugby league is shrinking. A greasy political ball League fans feel hard done by. John Prescott, a former Labour deputy prime minister and ardent Hull Kingston Rovers fan, spoke for many when he claimed union enjoyed an unfair advantage because of the "north-south divide." Not that it ever hurt him: the hardening feelings of northern resentment and dislocation Mr Prescott referred to are turning out well for Labour. The cities of the north have long been left-leaning - Labour has held Wigan since 1918 - yet not exclusively so. Until the 1980s, when the Conservatives last enjoyed big majorities, they regularly won seats in Manchester and Liverpool. Now they hold not a single council seat in those cities. Labour has a similar problem in the south, but the majorities won by New Labour in 1997, 2001 and 2005 suggest that is reversible. The northern antipathy to Tories appears increasingly cultural. In much of the M62 corridor, they are hardly in the game. In Manchester Withington, a Tory seat until 1987, they trail a distant third to Labour and the Liberal Democrats. This exile is self-perpetuating: the longer the Tories are absent from the north, the more they will be seen as a party of the south. This division is making Britain harder to govern. Even if the Tories secure all their 40 target seats at the next election, due in 2015, they may have a majority of only around 20 seats. Yet overcoming a cultural bias - as rugby fans know - is hard. It will take the Tories more than a high-speed train line - their main answer to the north-south divide - to win the love of the north. One suggestion is to devolve power to northern cities. That might make their politics more pragmatic and less tribal. Yet Bagehot has a more modest suggestion for the Tory prime minister, David Cameron. The last Conservative leader to attend rugby league's great occasion, the Challenge Cup final, was John Major. Mr Cameron, a union fan, should book himself a ticket.