The de-industrialised regions in, especially the NE, happened during the 1980s, when Mrs Thatchers policy was to let the "weak" businesses go to the wall without support, in the belief that new ones would arise from the ashes.
Unfortunately, the well-paid skilled jobs that were lost were gernerally replaced by casual less well-paid work.
Many of the former industrialised heartlands have had very low immigration:
their real problem is lack of well-paid jobs, which means less money both for consumers and the councils from council tax
The whole country is run by spivs on both sides, for the benefits of spivs like them: hedge-funders abd disaster capitalists
A vicious downward spiral, caused by short-term thinking
I live in Germany, where the govt would support manufacturing businesses going through a bad patch,
because they think that longterm an economy based more on making goods is better than one based on people selling services like nails or junk food to each other
There is a place for both in an economy, but the UK economy has deep structural problems going back at least a century.
Boris Johnson, 2013:
“If we left the EU… we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by ‘Bwussels’,
but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and underinvestment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure…
Why are we still, person for person, so much less productive than the Germans?
That is now a question more than a century old, and the answer is nothing to do with the EU.”