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An all-party pressure group wants to devolve and re-create the ancient kingdom of fearsome viking Erik Bloodaxe.

The Campaign for the North, chaired by former Tory MP Harold Elletson, wants ‘devo-max’ power from Westminster to bring the traditional counties of Northumberland, Durham, Yorkshire, Lancashire, Westmorland and Cumberland into one democratic state with powers equal to Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or London.

The kingdom was ruled a thousand years ago by the Norseman Erik Bloodaxe, the last ‘king of the North’.

A fearsome invader from the age of just 12 the viking Erik eventually fell in the battle of Stainmore, high in the Pennines in 954. He secured his crown by murdering his brothers.

Harold Elletson, Conservative MP for Blackpool North 1992-1997, said at his Lancashire home:

“It’s time for the North. England needs to embrace the reality of devolution within the United Kingdom and adopt a federal system. ‘Devo-max’ could give the North a new beginning. We should govern ourselves, raise taxes from our own resources and make all the important decisions – about education, health, transport and our economy – here in the North.

The Campaign commissioned The Case for the North, a study of the potential benefits of a Northern parliament that would govern 15 million people, a constituency as big as the successful German federal states, created after the Second World War by British planners roughly the size of Bavaria.