What I learnt about northern voters from five weeks on the campaign trail

Labour’s red wall may fall on the Brexit altar – but progressivism remains in the blood, writes Colin Drury

Boris Johnson campaigns in Grimsby. Many lifelong Labour voters are threatening to vote Tory ‘just this once’ (AP)

In a Tweet posted last Friday, the journalist Hannah Al-Othman noted she had been all across the north of England speaking to voters during the general election campaign.

“And let me tell you,” she wrote. “It is absolutely neck-and-neck between Don’t Know and Can’t Trust Any Of Them.”

It is an observation that resonates entirely with my own findings. For five weeks, I too have travelled the north spending time in a range of different constituencies and bothering a range of different voters: business owners, community leaders, party activists, shoppers, students and – often most knowledgeable of all – smokers stood outside pubs.