Jeremy Corbyn was warned by one of his MPs this week that his decision to back a second referendum would mean the “end of Labour in the north”.
But was John Mann right? Are northerners one Leave-voting electoral bloc, as they are often portrayed in London? Or is the loss of support from white working class voters already priced in for Corbyn?
While it’s true the voting patterns in the north revealed solitary Remain islands floating in a sea of Leave voting areas, the reality is that northerners have as varied and vibrant views as the rest of Britain on Brexit.
This is why with one month to go until Brexit, HuffPost UK embarked on an epic week-long journey across the heart of northern England – from Liverpool to Hull via cosmopolitan metropolises like Leeds and Manchester, and through the factory and mill towns of Lancashire and Yorkshire along the M62 motorway – to shatter the myths and give northerners a voice.
“We’re not all flat caps and whippets up here”
It was in the Labour stronghold of post-industrial Warrington (54% Leave) that Mann’s theory was immediately put to the test by local resident Mike Nolan.
The Remain supporter backs a second referendum and stressed: “We are not all flat caps and whippets up here; we have got our own opinions.
“I think if there is an opportunity to go back to the public and say ‘what you are voting for has changed, this is the reality’, I think it would be interesting.”
Further along the motorway in the village of Birstall, West Yorkshire (60% Leave in Batley and Spen), one voter attempted to dispel Mann’s concerns further.
Standing yards from where MP Jo Cox was brutally murdered by far-right extremist Thomas Mair during the 2016 referendum, Carl Gottowick said the idea that Corbyn would lose support was a “red herring” and that voters would move on from Brexit at the time of the next election.
As he waited for a bus, Gottowick said: “If you say it was Labour voters who voted to Leave, then who were all the Remainers?”
“I was a staunch Labour voter and now I see somebody that’s living in 1972”
One thing Corbyn’s internal critics have got right is that white, older, working class voters are deserting Labour.
And while a second referendum is unlikely to help with the Leave-voting section of this group, four years after he became leader of the opposition, it appears that most have already moved away from the party anyway.
In the overlooked East Yorkshire port town of Goole (66% Leave), which is daubed with graffiti declaring “Brexit is about migration control”, Ray Kinder perhaps best highlighted the situation.
The Leave voter said the Brexit process now left him wondering: “Are we doing the right thing now?”
But despite Corbyn offering him the choice to reconsider, he said: “I’m a Labour man, right, and now we’ve got this guy in for Labour now who I wouldn’t trust as far as I could throw him.”
Judy Warner, who lives in an area of Hull (67.6% Leave) she describes as “little Warsaw”, wants Brexit delivered on March 29 “otherwise we’re a laughing stock”.
But she drifted away from Labour long ago over far more fundamental issues with Corbyn.
She said: “I was a staunch Labour voter and now I see somebody that’s living in 1972 when the unions called the shots and living in a world which isn’t real anymore.
“I don’t like the way things have gone in the Labour Party where if there’s a voice of dissent you’re deselected and kicked out, how is that socialist? It’s not.”
“He’s a two-faced person, the many voted for Brexit and he’s trying to get the few to stop it”
The scale of the challenge uniting a voter base with such diverse views on Brexit was highlighted by Joe Harwood, a bright-eyed 19 year-old drama student in Hull.
He backed Labour in the 2017 general election, wants a second referendum and would back Remain.
But despite Corbyn now pushing for another poll, Harwood says he has recently discovered the Labour leader’s lifelong Euroscepticism and it is turning him off the party.
“Jeremy Corbyn, yeah he may be backing another referendum but he originally wanted to leave the EU, whereas poor Theresa May, even though she’s done a hell of a lot wrong, she wanted to stay.”
Another staunch Remainer, David Nicholls in Leeds (50.3% Remain), described Brexit as “a load of f***ing rubbish” but saw the prospect of another referendum as “intensely depressing” and Corbyn’s move as cynical after the recent resignation of nine Labour MPs.
“His entire political career he’s been against the EU and British membership of it but he’s trying desperately to keep the Labour Party together that’s just as divided as the Tories,” Nicholls said.
Steve Temple in Goole was already a Ukip supporter, and saw a similar lack of honesty in Corbyn.
“He’s a two-faced person, he stands on the rostrum – ‘for the many, not the few’.
“The many voted for Brexit and he’s trying to get the few to stop it.”
“I think the EU is quite a bigoted, bullying organisation”
While many people see a second referendum as Remainer plot to stop Brexit, Pauline and Neil Delaney in Warrington are in the opposite situation.
The couple voted to Remain – but don’t want a second vote.
Neil said: “We have had the results of that and whether you like it or not, you have to stick to it.”
Pauline says they would actually vote to leave now as they feel the Brexit wrangling had shown the EU in its true colours.
“I think they are quite a bigoted, bullying organisation and I don’t really think I want to be part of anything like that for our country. I think Britain is better than that.”
“I don’t think the two party system will survive”
Almost no one in the north talked about the new Independent Group of centrist, second referendum-backing MPs who have broken away from Labour and the Tories.
But Oliver Morton in Halifax (58%) saw it as a harbinger of a bigger realignment, and suggested that talk of Labour’s electoral hopes missed the entire point.
He said: “When I think it comes to the voting booths next time around for the general election I think there’s going to be big surprises.
“I think there’s probably going to be some seismic shifts in the way politics works in the UK, I don’t think the two party system will survive, there will probably be a lot of fractures and splits, and then come the general election people will probably have the better, clearer decision to make about who they vote for.”
“Oh my god”
If the north is as divided as the rest of the country, it was summed up by one couple in Oldham (60% Leave), one of the country’s most deprived areas.
Thomas Faseyiku, 19 and Joyce Odunmakinde, 18, only discovered when they spoke to HuffPost UK that they held completely opposing views about Brexit.
Faseyiku said: “Brexit is nice, I support Brexit; it’s cool. I believe in Brexit. It’s going to work, it’s going to make the country better.
“I think it is going to be better because of illegal immigrants innit. It’s going to stop them.”
However, girlfriend Odunmakinde was horrified and exclaimed: “Oh my god” and held her face in her hands.
She explained she is against Brexit and has concerns as she does not have a British passport, only a German one and believes Brexit will make travel harder for everyone.
About her boyfriend’s views, she said: “I don’t respect his views. I never asked him about his opinion on Brexit so this is the first time I am hearing it and I am shocked.”