TALK of a North/South divide almost always paints us up here on the northern side of that divide as the losers.

While the South is portrayed as the land of milk and honey, up here we are all too often stereotypically dismissed as whippet-walking, pigeon-breeding, beer-swilling plebs.

But a new North/South divide has been identified this week - and we in the frozen North find ourselves very much on the right side, for once.

It’s a Brexit divide, as identified by Northern Powerhouse minister Jake Berry, who has been singing our praises in the national press.

While those soft southerners have gloomily fallen for the Project Fear doom-mongering washing around the lower half of the country, we up here are eagerly embracing the opportunities that Brexit will bring the country.

“Northerners are brave about Brexit and we can all learn from their optimism and spirit of resilience,” said the minister. Hear, hear.

While southerners worry about bacon shortages, the collapse of the health service and lorries stacked on the motorway at Dover, we “oop North” are itching to free ourselves from the shackles of the European Union. And as the minister rightly identified, “much of the North voted for Brexit because people there feel a disconnect from what they perceive as decades of London-based, city-centric government.”

Too right, Mr Berry. There is a discernible “bring it on!” attitude among many northerners, fed up with the lack of progress on Brexit and heartily tired of the political wrangling with the obdurate EU “negotiators”, for whom the concept of actually negotiating seems entirely alien to them.

We gritty northerners aren’t fazed by the increasingly apocalyptic scenarios being dreamt up by those who want to deny democracy by calling for another referendum. We’re fed up with hearing the BBC talking about our “crashing out of the EU without a deal”; and we’re raring to strike out on our own, embracing our regained sovereignty and showing the imperial, democracy-deficient EU just what Britain can achieve on its own.

Mr Berry suggested that devolution could be one of the results of Brexit for the North, with new powers handed from Brussels to our regions. That may be - and it is impossible to disagree with Mr Berry’s assertion that “the rude health of the North’s economy is down to the unique resilience of its people: our makers, inventors and disrupters” - but the only devolution I (and many northern Brexiteers like me) am interested in is that which frees us from the EU.

It’s great to see a government minister displaying real optimism for our region. I just wish those other, more despondent ministers such as the chancellor of the exchequer could lift their noses out of the gloom.