Manufacturing is booming in the Conservative heartlands of southeast England but in the newly blue former “red wall” constituencies of the West Midlands and northwest the picture is far gloomier. Those are the headlines from Make UK, formerly the engineering employers’ federation, in its quarterly snapshot of industrial confidence.

The southeast is, after the northwest, the second largest manufacturing region, employing 400,000 people.

The report by the employers’ federation found that member firms in the southeast were well ahead of those in the regions, sometimes by a substantial margin, in terms of output, orders, employment and investment.

In export orders, the southeast scored a net positive balance of +39, the difference between the number of companies reporting a rise in orders and those reporting a