It would be hard to imagine a new Labour minister displaying a map of Britain upside down in his office, as Tony Benn once did, to guard against regional prejudice. Our current political masters put all their — or rather our — eggs in the basket marked EC1. The City of London was meant to be the dynamo that drove post-industrial Britain. It has instead turned out to be whatever is the opposite of a dynamo, and while the bankers were busy ruining us, we were persuaded to put up with the side effects: indecent bonuses, impossible London house prices, metropolitan arrogance, the decline of our remaining industry and the regions in which it existed.

A reaction of sorts is setting in. David Cameron promises “a radical power shift” to the localities, about which we are entitled to be fairly sceptical. Meanwhile the cultural establishment is seeking to make amends for centralisation, as though in a fit of guilt. Some BBC production will be moved north; National Theatre plays are to be projected in regional cinemas; the Royal Opera House is planning an annexe in Manchester. And Andy Burnham, the culture secretary, wants a new British Capital of Culture every two years. He contends that the provinces can benefit from the way the internet “diminishes the importance of place”.

But that is precisely the problem for the provinces, given that they are comprised of places. A charity called Common Ground exists to reconnect us with our localities, and to counter the subtle psychological damage arising from not knowing who planted that tree on the green, or when or why — or what type of tree it is, because this is partly about nomenclature.

It is as though we’ve lost our talent for names. Look at all those new streets called Leisure Way. You’d think there was something shameful, unmentionable about our topography. What was once The Manchester Guardian is now just The Guardian; the former London Tilbury and Southend Railway is now C2C; the North Western Main Line is Virgin Trains. The old Middlesbrough football stadium was Ayresome Park; the new is the Riverside Stadium, while Sunderland swapped Roker Park for the Stadium of Light, featuring the Kronenbourg Upper Stand.

The Norwich Union building society will soon be changing its name to Aviva — the idea, I suppose, being that foreign-sounding names remind us of holidays, heat and having sex. I expect Aviva to go the way of BA’s midlife-crisis ethnic tailfins. But then again, the expansion of aviation militates against place anyway. I once complained about the aircraft flying over my house, only to be told, “Aeroplane movements are not related to points on the ground”, which was certainly bad news for me, since I’ve always lived on the ground.

In an intemperate yet melodic Smiths song called Panic, Morrissey listed some actual places in actual Britain that might rise up and take violent action against the corporate blankness, as manifest in mid-Atlantic pop: “Dublin, Dundee, Humberside”. He should get the CBE just for using the word “Humberside” in a lyrical context. Morrissey, eternally Mancunian even if he does live in Rome, connects us to a time when every British region had its laureate: DH Lawrence for Nottinghamshire, JB Priestley for West Yorkshire, Arnold Bennett for the Potteries. It’s true that Alan Bennett is associated with Leeds. And I believe that some Pontefract cakes are still made in Pontefract. But homogenisation is the dominant trend, frequently met by complacency. A Lancastrian friend says: “We’ve got this inbuilt arrogance. It’s in our DNA: the consciousness of being the first industrial region.” But is this not in danger of being washed away on a tide of cappuccino? In my native York, an area once known as Little Stonegate (only, I admit, for about 500 years) became the Restaurant Quarter, featuring a sushi bar with clocks telling the time in London, Paris and New York — but not the time in York.

I think we should revisit times past, since “cool eateries” are not proving sufficient to sustain our regions. Bring back gritty realism, an economy based on tangible production, trains, a sense of community and proud regional identity, in place

of fatuous optimism, services, aeroplanes, individualism and globalisation. These last were the panaceas emanating from our capital city, and the verdict upon them is now definitely in s

Andrew Martin’s new novel, The Last Train to Scarborough, is published by Faber and Faber

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