From the editor: 'Taken for granted but there is a cost to ignoring us up north'

That was a message from a fellow journalist yesterday who was working in a different part of the country. It might not be your view but it is certainly one that is hard to argue with when you look back at our country and county’s recent political past. We were the bedrock of the red vote and now we are not. In fact, that ‘not’ was largely responsible for the party’s worst defeat in a general election since 1935. It turned out that while the north rarely seems to be factored into big Westminster decisions, it still has teeth because – and you would think all parties would have realised this more quickly – there are a lot of us up here.

The Conservatives played their Brexit card in towns and cities that felt unheard and unloved ..., the rest is history.

Sheffield was one of the few places where some Labour MPs didn’t just scrape home but had resounding successes. What do I put that down to? They are brilliant individuals who genuinely know their neighbourhoods, understand what matters there, stick up for those who live there and, shock horror, fight for them on a national level. I’m not sure that is rocket science but we all know of politicians who are shipped in because it is an easy-win area and they have a career to build. We need less of that and more of doing the job because it is a vocation and they want to make a difference.

What did you think of Keir’s speech yesterday? Believe it or not, that is what matters rather than what the national papers and commentators think – because you are the ones with the vote and the ones MPs are paid to represent.

There is a long way to go before the next election and goodness only knows what will come our way before it, considering how our world has been flipped upsidedown since that last one. But we all do better if there is strong opposition, perhaps even more than one. So let’s hope somebody starts to take the whole country seriously rather than that infamous Westminster bubble.

What was the conclusion of my brief discussion on taking the north for granted with my colleague yesterday? ‘It is the whole London thing to blame too - all parties are massively guilty of that.’