Conventional wisdom is often right, in politics as in everything else. But that does not mean we should not question it. Since the Conservatives’ ballot-box triumph in December, the fashionable argument has been that it is impossible for the government to remain true to its “traditional” support in the affluent south while satisfying the demands of the former Labour voters in northern England and the Midlands who provided the electoral breakthrough.

This is a truism rather than a demonstrable truth. No one has been more assiduous in challenging it than James Frayne, founder of the opinion research group Public First and author of Meet the People. He has conducted countless focus groups in these former Labour heartlands, so his opinions have an empirical basis.