That's how infrastructure projects are prioritised in the UK. Return on the pound. The south east returns something like 10x the investment versus the north of England.
Just look at HS2 - everything north and north east of Birmingham has effectively been cancelled, leaving yet another "national" infrastructure project serving only London.
This Government, or the previous one, or the previous one, ad nauseam, continually fail to invest in the north, and north east. In fact the last major national infrastructure in those regions would be the building of the motorways. (edit) And just look at the North East, Sedgefield had Labour PM Tony Blair, Hartlepool had MP and cabinet member Peter Mandelson, and yet the investment there during that 15 year period was negligible. It's a London-based Government thing, not a political thing.
If you're not "close" to London, you're going to be poor by comparison.
Bringing Newcastle closer to Leeds by faster road and rail, and hence York, Sheffield, Manchester, Liverpool and the Potteries, would hugely increase economic productivity in the North of England.
I too hope that WFH will redistribute the wealth around the UK.
I hate the fact that we have an idiotic adversarial political system. Which ever party is in power is invariably hamstrung by the opposition voting the other way just 'because', is pathetically childish. The best time to build infrastructure was yesterday.