YESTERDAY was a defining day on the General Election campaign trail.

It seems the Boris bubble has definitely burst.

He may have received a warm and uneventful welcome near Stockton last week when he visited the Tetley Tea factory in Eaglescliffe, but the beleaguered, flood-hit communities in South Yorkshire did not stand on ceremony in the same way.

The good folk of that area, not usually ones to mince their words and understandably angry after floods devastated large areas of their communities last week, heckled him, yelled at him, and one even refused to speak to him.

Boris' stance on Brexit is no longer enough for this area, despite it being a region where two-thirds of people voted to leave the EU. It was a defining moment because it seems Brexit, for some, is no longer the key issue.

"Everyone's in poverty - the whole country's a joke," shouted a hooded heckler at a community centre in the village of Fishlake, which ironically resembled a lake more than a town after 500 homes were left underwater and thousands of people evacuated in last week's floods. They are expected to be homeless for weeks.

It took Boris five days to summon a COBRA meeting. His heckler continued: "“F*** the government, f*** the council – people are living on the streets, kids are living in the streets, nobody gives a f*** about them. Sort it out."

Bravely Boris had taken to the streets to talk to people, believing himself as to be, as he traditionally was, the popular candidate, the joker, the man of the people.

Theresa May and David Cameron, perhaps more wisely, tended to keep the unpredictable public at arm's length while on the campaign trail, concentrating their media opportunities on speeches to Conservative-voting crowds or choreographed factory tours. But Boris - or as we should really call him, Mr Johnson – has been used to being a celebrity, rather than a grey, unpopular politician.

The honeymoon period has been short. He was voted in as Prime Minister by Conservative Party members – mostly men, mostly old – and Brexiteers at least hoped he would be their ticket out the EU.

The Brexit vote was a complex matter. For some it was pure and simple xenophobia, others well-thought out issues with the way the EU is run, but for many it was disillusionment.

Looking for someone to blame is an old-hat political tactic to deflect attention away from the real issues, and blaming the EU and immigration for all the country's woes was a great way of turning the country's gaze away from the devastating effects of extreme cuts which only served the interests of the higher-rate taxpayers, and which will now take decades to put right.

The lack of understanding from the current Government was all too evident. Boris turned up, thinking he'd be lauded, he'd make a joke and everyone would feel better about being homeless, and they'd forget the fact it had taken him six days to take any action.

Brexit is in the shadows. Now the real issues are coming to the surface. Poverty. School funding. Hospital waiting lists. We can't blame those things on the EU.