Labour's Makeover Won't Fool The North

■ FAR WISER people than I have made far more erudite comments about the death of this wonderful man than I could ever manage – perhaps the most impressive eulogy for Captain Sir Tom Moore came from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, who said: “ Where he walked, a nation followed.” But possibly this can be added. We are witnessing the curtain sadly coming down on probably the finest generation this country has known. Selfless, full of humility, and understanding implicitly what the word “duty” meant. They got through wars, austerity and trauma without group hugs, counsellors “reaching out” and woke-like absurdity. Truly, we shall never see their like again.

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To the Conservatives they made up the “red wall”. For Labour, they are the “foundation seats”. Whatever you might choose to call them, their loss represented the big

gest bulldozing at the polls Labour had suffered in more than 80 years, allowing Boris Johnson to romp home with a thumping 80-seat majority – leaving Labour’s socalled “heartland” on life support.

Unsurprisingly, after licking its wounds the Labour Party has resolved to win them back, commissioning research which has come up with recommendations more insulting than insightful.

More on that in a moment, but first the scale of the task facing the party. The seats in question make up many Northern and Midlands constituencies, and some had been in Labour’s hands for generations.

Sedgefield in County Durham – once represented for a quarter of a century by Tony Blair – went to the Tories for the first time in nearly 90 years.