The Power Up the North collaboration has been praised for putting the region at the very top of the new Government’s agenda.

The Northern Powerhouse Partnership (NPP) said the collaboration between media organisations Newsquest – publishers of the Hexham Courant­ – JPI Media and Reach had helped to make the North’s demands “non-negotiable”.

The Labour Party’s traditional heartlands turned blue with North-East strongholds Blyth Valley, North West Durham, Sedgefield, Bishop Auckland, Stockton South, Redcar and Darlington being taken by the Conservatives

And other previously safe Labour seats were lost to the Tories in their droves across the North, which the NPP’s director, Henri Murison, claimed had now become the UK’s key “electoral battleground”.

“Both main parties stood in this election on a programme of closing the North–South divide, in large part in response to the Power Up the North campaign led by our regional newspapers,” said Mr Murison.

“As the electoral battleground for the future is now firmly here in the North of England – in the North-East, from Cumbria down to Cheshire and right across the M62 belt of industrial towns into South Yorkshire and the banks of the Humber – the Northern Powerhouse is non-negotiable at any future general election, with education, industrial policy and transport infrastructure the priorities.”

The NPP’s vice-chairman, Lord Jim O’Neill, said he now expected prime minister Boris Johnson to follow through his election pledges for the North given the key role voters had played in the Conservative’s decisive victory.

The campaign, which was launched in June, called on all political parties, in particular the next government, to back the Northern Powerhouse vision in full to “reverse decades of under-investment in key services”.