If any one city has emerged as a definitive example of the fraught polarities of Brexit since Britain voted to exit the European Union, it is Sunderland. With almost 62% of its electorate voting to leave the EU in 2016, and as the first city to declare a leave vote on the night of the referendum, Sunderland provided one of the biggest urban majorities in favour of Brexit and exemplified the swathes of northern towns and cities that voted leave.

Sunderland, like many northern cities, has been grievously undermined by decades of deindustrialisation and chronic economic disinvestment. Moreover, Sunderland owes much of its economic livelihood to the now-infamous Nissan car plant, whose very existence its electorate has supposedly threatened by supporting Brexit.

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