YOUTH unemployment in Bradford, northern England, is double the UK average. The city is the third most affordable place in Britain to buy a home.

Incomes per head in inner London are the highest in the European Union; those in Bradford are lower than the average of the UK and the EU, which includes the still extremely poor nations of the old communist bloc.

There has been much speculation about the reasons for George Galloway’s spectacular victory in the Bradford West by-election against all of the main parties. It was a one-off, some posited. It was a protest by the seat’s big Muslim population against the war in Afghanistan. It was unhappiness with Ed Miliband’s leadership and Labour’s austerity-lite approach to the economy.

No doubt all these factors played a part, but something seems to be missing from the list of causes: namely that Bradford West, like many other towns and cities in Britain’s regions, is deep in recession and suffering from a jobs crisis. This is not really about the failed war against the Taliban; it is about the failed war against poverty.

Britain is not the only country that has depressed regions. America has the rust belt of the midwest. Germany has the old Lander of the east. Italy has the mezzogiorno of the south. Yet in no other country is the scale of the problem so acute, thecommitment in government to do anything about the problem so weak, the outlook so desperate.

In Michigan, there have at least been signs of a renaissance in the car industry. In Brandenburg, there is at least the sense that policymakers will continue to make resources available for long-term development. In Italy, the poor south is matched by the rich north. In Britain, only two regions — London and the rest of the southeast of England — are richer than the national average.

The decline of the once thriving industrial heartlands has had four distinct phases. In the 19th century, the north of England was where the action was in the UK economy. But as the structure of the economy changed in the first half of the 20th century, the new industries tended to be based, not in places such as Bradford and Blackburn, but along the arterial roads of the south-east of England. — The Guardian, London