The British town hit harder by Tory austerity than anywhere else in the UK

It will have come as no surprise to anyone in Barnsley this week to learn their proud town has been hit harder by austerity cuts than any other place in Britain.

The stories from the Barnsley leg of our Wigan Pier Project – the final stop on our and George Orwell’s 1936 journey – are some of the most moving of all.

Antonia Robson, 25, holding her eight-month-old son Hunter, saying that “hard-working families” like hers “get nothing”, and that “everyone I know is in debt”.

Jessica Fox, 30, a mother of two young children with no income, and no support because her family has just been transferred onto Universal Credit .

Peter Robertshaw, 25, an unemployed father-of-two collecting food via a charity voucher scheme at the market for his two young children, one of whom giggles as she stuffs a banana hungrily into her mouth.

What’s harder to understand is how any government could take a town struggling with losing its traditional industries to the zero-hour economy, and slash its budgets by an ­eye-watering 40%.

But this is exactly what the Tories have done over the last eight years, according to research from the Centre for Cities.

It’s a figure around four times the average reduction faced by councils in the South East, and has led to hugely damaging cuts to public services. It seems we weren’t “in it all together” after all.

Barnsley – which once defied Margaret Thatcher during the Miners’ Strike – is used to being attacked by the Tories.

So, news that Theresa May now plans to bribe the MPs of Leave-voting “coalfield” constituencies like theirs with cash will be seen for exactly what it is.

The desperate act of a Prime Minister whose plan has simply unravelled.

The Government has had almost three years since the referendum to loosen the screws in austerity-stricken areas.

If it had done so, the country could have been in a totally different place by now.

Instead, Theresa May is left waving tawdry £5 notes at a ­community that’s already only surviving – like in the Miners’ Strike days – through local ­solidarity.

And all the while she plans to engineer a hard Brexit from which that community can only lose.

Let’s hope this bribery goes better than the great DUP bribe, which has proceeded with all the aplomb and dignity of a kid trying to buy off the school bully with sweets – only to find, they want paying again and again and again.

At least May’s offer is also an admission that there is a link between austerity cuts and Brexit, that the Tories usually firmly deny.

If you cross-reference the new Centre for Cities research with Brexit vote figures, a pattern starts to emerge.

Barnsley, which leads the austerity cuts league table by a long chalk, voted 68.3% to Leave the EU. Oxford – where budgets have actually gone up 14.7% over the last eight years – voted 70% Remain.

On the list, only ­Liverpool – second in the cuts league table – bucks the trend.

Assailed by austerity cuts so deep they are reminiscent of Thatcher’s ‘managed decline’ plan for the city in the 80s, Liverpool – which has been regenerated by EU money – voted 58.2% to stay, but much of the rest of Merseyside voted to come out.

One factor given by some experts was the city’s lack of exposure to the Sun newspaper, due to the mass boycott that remains since ­that paper’s Hillsborough coverage.

Next on the list, Doncaster, third worst hit (30.6% cuts), voted 69% out. Wakefield, in fourth place (30.1% cut), voted 66.3% leave.

In fifth place, ­Blackburn (26.7% cuts) voted by 56.3% to Leave.

The scale of these cuts – deliberately devolved by a Tory government ­overwhelmingly to Labour councils – are not accidental but were embedded in the very architecture of George Osborne’s austerity plan.

He knew the councils with the highest social burden would not only struggle to raise extra revenue, but would also need more money to support the poor, disabled and elderly.

The result has been devastating.

It’s worth remembering this every time the former Chancellor pops up on TV documentaries with a sad shake of his head, trying to look like the sensible one who failed to persuade his mate Dave Cameron not to hold the ­referendum.

These were Osborne’s vicious cuts, aided and abetted by the wild-eyed ideologue Iain Duncan Smith.

And to me, when the day of reckoning comes, this remains not just Cameron’s but Osborne’s Brexit.

In the meantime, what Barnsley needs is to be treated like the Tories treat their own heartlands – with a bit of respect and fairness.

It needs an end to this punishing, disproportionate, bitter austerity and a crackdown on employment agencies exploiting zero-hour workers. It needs new jobs and fresh hope.

It doesn’t need a bung of cash – just a bit of old-fashioned social and economic justice.

Imagine what a town with the grit, spirit and solidarity of Barnsley could do with some support, instead of constant assault.