Between showers a queue has formed outside one of Rochdale’s soup kitchens, in Drake Street, and Muhammad Aziz has a shopping trolley of food collected from local businesses and families to give away, offering bread, muffins and cakes to people. “I do this every day,” he said. “Rochdale has a lot of deprivation and a lot of poverty. We’re trying to make Rochdale better again, help people back on their feet.” And how will he vote? “I’m a Conservative,” he says. “The Tories are the people who can bring the money from London.”

Huh.