Acombination of long-term cultural shifts and the fallout from the 2016 referendum have disrupted the electoral map in this general election, and two kinds of English places stick out. In one group – exemplifed by such recent Labour wins as Canterbury and Kensington, and talk of the Tories losing some Home Counties suburbs – are the kind of constituencies where a broadly liberal, educated element is repulsed by the Conservatives’ reinvention as an anti-European, decidedly nasty party. Meanwhile, politicos are newly obsessed with the second: a very different swath of seats that are post-industrial and less affluent, where a majority of people voted leave and politics seems to be in a fascinating state of flux.

We are facing an estrangement between progressive politics and the people it once spoke to as a matter of instinct

This “red wall” includes, to quote from the Mail on Sunday, “the constituencies in the Midlands and the north which have historically voted Labour, but are swinging towards the Tories because of Mr Corbyn’s opaque Brexit policy”. Our exit from the EU – or, rather, the fact that it has yet to happen – is certainly a big part of what is afoot. But if Labour shows signs of weakness in these places, many of the reasons stretch back decades. In that sense, however people vote, the sudden arrival of these places at the heart of politics marks a welcome turn away from the vapid politics of “aspiration” towards something altogether more vital and visceral. It also asks massive questions of the left about whom it wants to represent, and where its politics is going.

Last week, I spent four days travelling from Wolverhampton to Darlington, via the old Nottinghamshire coalfields and the Lincolnshire town of Grimsby: all said to be areas where the Tories may well be in with a serious chance of winning. I spoke to a lot of people – older leavers, in the main – who talked about their affinity with Labour as something from the past, were bitterly dismissive of Jeremy Corbyn, and set on voting for Boris Johnson, even if their view of the Tory leader was often deeply sceptical. Equally, the stereotype of politically aware young people avidly consuming the election on their phones and determined to vote Labour is real, and often impressive.

In between lay a varied array of voters, many of whom vividly conveyed why – notwithstanding Labour ticking up in the polls – the party seems to have no chance of convincingly beating such an awful government, with such a terrible record. I met people who work as teaching assistants and care workers, still uncertain whom to vote for, with a view of Labour characterised not by contempt but a puzzled sense of distance. Running through a great deal of what I heard was a point voiced time and again by all kinds of people: in the absence of Brexit being delivered, why should they trust politicians to do anything else?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘If your response is horror and bafflement, do not blame the voters.’ Brexit party leader Nigel Farage campaigning in Grimsby last month. Photograph: Lindsey Parnaby/AFP via Getty Images

And then there are the even more profound political factors. Go to such cities as Manchester and Plymouth, and you instantly get a sense that Labour has renewed its identity, and reaped the rewards. In too many other places, by contrast, there is often a sense of historically complacent party establishments, and failures frozen into the architecture: the Soviet-esque office block nudging the Victorian terrace, the grim multi-storey car park.

Everywhere I go, there is no end of social innovation happening, usually in the form of grassroots initiatives that prove that some communitarian, compassionate ideals run as deep in the old Labour heartlands as they ever did. But politics too often seems irrelevant. In Grimsby, I spent time at Centre4, which offers everything from financial help for new small businesses, through support for people experiencing loneliness, to a gym. Its volunteers – women, for the most part – talked about the election as an extraneous event that didn’t much interest them.

If what we are facing is a deepening estrangement between progressive politics and the people and places it once spoke to as a matter of instinct, even more difficult arguments rear their heads. If you see a certain kind of old, white, working-class man and think that progressive politics ought to have nothing to do with him, you should maybe understand that your opinion is an indication of huge political failure.

We also need to understand that the young person talking passionately about Corbyn and embracing his brand of social justice does not represent an entire generation. At a shopping parade in the Wolverhampton neighbourhood of Penn I met two sparky, loquacious twentysomethings whose jobs pay less than £9 an hour: he a duty manager at a town-centre hotel, she a care assistant. When I asked them whether they had thought of joining a trade union, they bluntly told me they did not know what that term meant. Neither did they have any sense of what the Labour party stands for. After talking to them, I sat in the car and listened to Len McCluskey imploring the party’s lost voters to “come home”. What does that even mean any more?

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The same, it pains me to say, applies to all the lingering noise about the Brexit referendum somehow being overturned and the need for a second vote. I am a passionate remainer. Instinctively, the prospect of binning the Brexit result lifts my spirits; since 2016, one of the most frustrating aspects of British politics has been Labour’s refusal to talk meaningfully about our exit from the EU and the Tory fantasies that have propelled it. But at the same time, much more difficult thoughts are inescapable.

Once a culture of industry, trade unionism and reflex Labour-voting had started to wane, people in post-industrial England felt increasingly cut off from politics. Whatever its inbuilt mendacities, the referendum was presented as a clear, era-defining choice; and whatever their motivations, people voted in good faith. Which brings me to my own tortured ambivalence, and a conclusion that has been rattling around my head since I got back from the red wall trip: unless millions of voters’ exasperation with what has happened since 2016 is convincingly answered, and some kind of Brexit takes place, the chances of any firm reconnection between progressive politics and its supposed ancient heartlands look slim.

That, undeniably, is one of the key reasons why a party led by an Eton-educated chancer is forecast to perform strongly in seemingly unlikely places – and why, even if Labour holds on in these seats, it has no end of work to do. If your response to that is a mixture of horror and bafflement, do not blame the voters. Think about your own side, from the Corbyn-supporting left to the liberal remain hardcore, and absences and estrangements out in the country that still seem a long way from receiving any kind of convincing answers.

• John Harris is a Guardian columnist