The Red Wall will 'never be rebuilt' in the North, says polling expert

“That group who’ve been priced out of cities, or who’ve moved to start a family, they’re exporting what you might call the city values with them to where they’re moving to,” he said.

“What’s happened to the Conservative Party is that within those cities like Leeds, Sheffield, Manchester, and increasingly London as well, they’re just not appealing anymore, which wasn’t the case even sort of 20 years ago.

“It worked to the Tories advantage in 2019, and that the Labour vote was stacking up in these big cities, and the Conservatives, electoral geography was much more favourable.

“As that starts to diffuse, you’ve got a real challenge for the Conservatives.

“You’ve got this group who could be Tories, but actually aren’t because part of the reason they’ve moved is house prices, and the Tories don’t have an answer for it.”

He said that although it will hard for many Yorkshire Conservatives to withstand a 15 point Labour surge, it is not a guarantee that Labour holds onto them in the subsequent trips to the ballot box.

“I am particularly interested in some of those South Yorkshire seats, Don Valley, Rother Valley, they have been trending towards the Tories,” he said.

“This wasn’t a thing that just happened, Theresa May made big progress.

“If you chat to voters in Don Valley, there is a realignment that’s happened, they’re not going back to the Labour Party because they love them.

“What you have to remember about that group is that it was a big moment for them to unhook from the Labour Party.

“I’m not sure if there are any individual MPs that have enough of a profile to survive a “red wave” but that doesn’t mean those seats are going back to Labour forever, the red wall is never going to be rebuilt.

“The Tories are not winning back seats like Canterbury or Battersea, they’re gone for a much longer time, so the only realistic route is through being able to be competitive in parts of the red wall.”

Despite a focus from many Tory MPs on the benefits of levelling up, others have serious concerns about the future of the project, with doubts over the Prime Minister’s commitment to it.

John Stevenson, the chairman of the Northern Research Group of Tory MPs, told The Yorkshire Post earlier this week he wanted to see levelling up return to its roots under George Osborne and become the “Northern Powerhouse 2.0.”

However, under both Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak, critics have said the party’s commitment to levelling up hasn’t seen the same level of attention given by their predecessor.

“It is interesting that levelling up isn’t in Rishi Sunak’s five pledges, people think it’s Boris’s thing,” said Mr Tryl.

He added that he felt “junking the phrase” and replacing it with the Northern Powerhouse would be a mistake.

“It does cut through,” he said, adding that despite this, many of the bigger infrastructure projects which are included in the levelling up agenda, are often not lumped in with the rest of the project by much of the public.

“With something such as HS2 not going to Leeds, it sends a signal that the Government does not care.”