With a general election called, I hope that our cousins in Whitehall can now spend less time focused on political intrigue and more time thinking about what the country needs.

We’ve had a lot of talk already in this election about swing voters in rugby league towns. While that might be the fashionable term in London’s policy circles, I’d ask them to spend a little bit of time thinking about the old football-playing industrial cities — and how we might even be able to help them.

We might not be considered fashionable, but here in Sunderland we want to make a success of Brexit. We were the first to vote to leave. And we’re also one of the populations most at risk of some of