“It’s like a bad Christmas cracker joke,” said one northern leader in England as the government announced its latest Network North transport project: fixing potholes in London.

The punchline, said Kim McGuinness, Labour’s candidate to be the mayor of north-east England, isn’t even funny. It’s “Tories celebrating widening the widening north/south divide”.

There was anger and exasperation on Wednesday after the Department for Transport (DfT) confirmed funding “for each London borough to ensure millions of road users enjoy smoother and safer journeys”.

The £235m of London pothole money was possible only because of £8.3bn of extra investment which came from scrapping HS2.