redistribution in disguise; a ruse for greedy northern bastards to snatch what they can. It was Scotland’s oil, but it’s London’s money! Why should chippiness be reserved only for the relatively poor? In the rest of Europe, it is a rich man’s game. In Belgium, for instance, rich Flemings grumble about lazy Walloons. Whenever Britain does something London does not like, wry cries for London’s independence emerge. Calls for Londexit flared after the Brexit vote, when London was the only region in England to vote to remain in the EU. Chippiness has long lurked in the southerner’s soul. Now, thanks to Mr Burnham, it has come to the surface. To see chippiness as only a tool to belittle is to misunderstand its potency. No one knows this better than Mr Burnham, who cemented himself as the voice of a rebellious north during covid-19. Throughout the pandemic, he referred to Greater Manchester as District 12 after “The Hunger Games”, a dystopian tale in which children from the outer regions are forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of those in the capital. Soon he will be in Downing Street (or a co-working space in Manchester). Channelling chippiness is the shortest path to power in Britain, as Mr Burnham shows. Scotland has become a one-party nation, with not even cartoonish scandals able to dislodge the SNP from power. Resentment lurks at the heart of Plaid Cymru’s rise in Wales. So who will speak for the chippy southerner? The fight has already begun. For both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, the path to power runs through the chippy south, speaking to the disaffected left-behind from Oxfordshire to Putney, who feel forgotten and ignored by a disconnected Mancunian elite. It is only natural that if power is redistributed then chippiness will be too. “Manchesterism” will have been a success only once the name Manchester conjures as much bile as the mention of London, notes one native of Britain’s new capital. It is well on the way already. Chippiness is another product of the zero-sum thinking that dominates British politics, where the idea that everyone can be better-off is long dead. There is less money to go round. Luckily, there is always enough animosity to share. Perhaps the best justification for Mr Burnham’s performative northernness is the reaction to his performative northernness. In this way, his pitch to the
country becomes clearer: a chicken in every pot and a chip on every shoulder. What can Mr Burnham offer to the man on the Elizabeth Line, hurtling on a shiny new air-conditioned train to his job in the most prosperous part of the country? The greatest gift of all: grievance. ■ Subscribers to The Economist can sign up to our Opinion newsletter, which brings together the best of our leaders, columns, guest essays and reader correspondence. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com//britain/2026/07/02/the-ascent-of-the-chippy-southerner
NATO ponders how to defend Eastern Europe as America pulls back German tanks are returning to a region they once razed July 2nd 2026 THE strange creatures rumble out of the forest, their bodies clothed in moss, torn fabric and plastic grass; their heads veiled in black netting. The Leopard tanks and Puma infantry fighting vehicles of Germany’s 45th Panzer Brigade are in fancy dress to hide them from hostile drones. For a month the unit trained along Lithuania’s border with Belarus, a Russian satellite state, as part of a recently completed exercise called “Freedom Shield”. The goal: to be ready to “fight tonight” to defend Vilnius, Lithuania’s capital, and hold the Suwalki corridor, which links the Baltic states to Poland. To that end, the 45th Brigade is not going home. For the first time since the end of the cold war, Germany is permanently deploying military units
abroad. These troops are the tip of the spear of an army that is expanding to become Europe’s largest. They will get the latest armour, artillery, drones and anti-aircraft systems as their unit grows from 1,600 soldiers to around 5,000 by the end of 2027. American forces in the region, meanwhile, are dwindling. An American tank unit—the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment—trained for months in the same area. But it shipped out in June, along with the rest of its brigade in Poland. Nobody knows when or if another American unit will replace it. Although Germany is struggling to sign up enough volunteers—some soldiers may have to be ordered to join the brigade—Lithuanians shower German troops with gratitude, says Lieutenant Colonel Sebastian Hagen, commander of the multinational battlegroup at the heart of the brigade. “What we are doing now is what all the allies did for Germany throughout the cold war,” he says. “The eastern flank has moved further to the east, and now it’s on Germany to give back a little bit.” The mission is all the more striking given that German armies—Teutonic, Prussian, imperial and Nazi—have more typically been invaders in the region. In the second world war, they conquered Poland, the Baltic states (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) and much of western Russia. After the Nazis surrendered in 1945, the Soviet Union seized the Baltic republics, which regained independence only as it collapsed in 1991. The Soviets also occupied the German city of Königsberg, now the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad. “We are very well aware of what Nazi Germany did here in Lithuania. We are also aware of what the Soviet occupation did to Lithuania,” adds Lieutenant Colonel Hagen. When it is not training, the brigade helps preserve war graves and Jewish cemeteries. The purpose of NATO, declared Lord Ismay, its first secretary-general, is “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”. But as President Donald Trump prepares to meet fellow NATO leaders in Ankara on July 7th-8th, Germany is rising up to keep the Russians out and, it hopes, the Americans in. Under a plan called “NATO 3.0” America demands that Europeans take the lead for their own conventional defence, while America provides a nuclear umbrella.
This fits with Germany’s own determination, since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to transform itself from a defence laggard into a linchpin of European security. It plans to reach NATO’s target of spending 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2029, well before the 2035 deadline. By the end of the decade, Germany could be spending more on its armed forces than nuclear- armed Britain and France combined. Money alone will not bring self-reliance, however. Collectively, NATO’s European members already spend more on defence than any country bar America. Yet they remain “strategically dependent on the United States across the entire military chain of operations”, declares a report by the Kiel Institute, a think-tank in Germany. How urgently Europe needs to change depends on two big questions that hang over the summit. First, how threatening is Vladimir Putin? Russia has reorganised its front with NATO with new units, bases and headquarters awaiting future fighting forces. NATO reckons that Russia could menace its members within a few years of an end to or reduction in fighting in Ukraine. Germany wants to be ready by 2029. Poland says the danger may be closer. The other question is what “America First” portends for Europe. Imagine four incarnations of Mr Trump, all plausible. One is the tough-love adult, pushing Europe to bulk up while protecting it in extremis, in keeping with NATO’s Article 5 on collective defence. Another is the absent friend, unwilling to fight for Europe but still providing some kind of indirect support. A third is the toxic ex-partner, who forsakes Europe but won’t leave the shared NATO home, making life hell for Europeans trying to marshall themselves. Last is the predator who menaces places like Greenland on Europe’s western flank while Russia threatens the eastern one.
Military types, from NATO’s supreme headquarters in Mons, through subordinate commands to frontline units, currently see mainly the tough- love avatar. European and American soldiers plan and train as they have for decades. They hope America will co-ordinate its drawdown with Europe’s build-up, leaving no vacuum. But Mr Trump is touchy and capricious. In May the Pentagon abruptly announced it would pull 5,000 troops from Germany, as Mr Trump took umbrage at criticism of the war in Iran by Friedrich Merz, the German chancellor. Perversely, the Pentagon has also gone back and forth about replacing the brigade that recently departed from Poland and Lithuania— two of the most pro-American European states. Pete Hegseth, America’s secretary of war, berated “shameful” European allies that kept out of America’s war in Iran and, in some cases, denied its forces use of European bases and airspace. He announced a six-month review of American forces in Europe, which have thus far shrunk from about 100,000 troops to about 80,000. As well as cutting frontline units, the Pentagon has reduced the rapid- reaction forces it promises to send NATO in case of a war, saying they are needed for actual or potential crises in the Middle East and the Pacific. These include bombers, fighters jets, air-refuelling tankers and warships
such as an aircraft-carrier and an attack submarine. That calls into question the “NATO Force Model”, which sets out what forces commanders can count on. Some in the Trump administration hint that they will not fight for the Baltic states and, worse, they raise concerns about the risk of escalation if NATO deploys missiles that can strike deep into Russian territory. It has cancelled the planned deployment to Germany of a unit eqipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles, with a range of up to 2,500km. It is also holding up Germany’s own order for Tomahawks and briefly blocked allies from using the most advanced AI models. As for the toxic version of Mr Trump, his administration is still destabilising politics in Europe by fomenting hard- right narratives there. The more anti-European America becomes, the more Russia will fancy a tilt at NATO and the harder it will be for Europeans to fight back. Russia need not mount a frontal assault. Many worry that a limited, ambiguous action might fatally expose NATO’s divisions. To understand the complexities, drive from Lithuania to the Polish city of Suwalki, through the neck of territory between Belarus and Kaliningrad (see map). Its cemeteries for seven faiths attest to the changing borders and