Battle is 'not lost in North heartlands'.

LABOUR has not lost its Northern heartlands but faces "hard fighting" ahead to win the general election to win, top MPs have claimed.

Housing Minister John Healey and Blaydon MP Dave Anderson spoke out after research claimed that the Tories were now ahead in the North - reversing a 19% lead held by Tony Blair in 2005.

Denying Labour would lose many seats in the region, Mr Healey admitted the polls - and odds - were against the party.

"But I think everything you have seen and heard at the conference suggests this is a platform from which the Labour party and Labour supporters will come out fighting," he said.

"We are got some hard fighting to do, but if the spirit from this week carries over to the next weeks and the next months, then we can pull back a lot of the ground that we are behind on at the moment. We can win the election."

Blaydon MP Dave Anderson said the Labour Government had stopped the global financial crisis from becoming a "total collapse" and that voters needed to be reminded of that as well as "great achievements" over the last decade.

"And we need to tell our people that things won't be the same going forward. Make the wrong choice at the next election and this country will go backwards," he said in an address to conference.

Attacking the Tories, he claimed they would make massive cuts even though "Lord Snooty, Boy George and the rest of the Old Etonians are trying to keep their policies a closely guarded secret".

"The next election will be a choice not a referendum," he added.