The Red Wall Fights Back. The Political Status Quo Is Running Out Of Chances
Yesterday’s election results could well turn out to be seismic. They suggest that the Realignment is not only ongoing, but accelerating. But this Realignment seems to be taking a different shape, largely because the Conservatives ultimately lacked the dexterity and political imagination to seize the opportunity of completing the Realignment.
Both parties have heard the concerns of Red Wall voters loud and clear. And they have decided, for various reasons, that addressing them would be too difficult or would upset orthodoxy. This is what happens when mainstream politicians make big promises and then decide not to deliver on these promises.
Now politics as a whole needs to address why the Red Wall has been so badly misunderstood and underrepresented in Whitehall, the media and politics.
It is essential that politicians stop seeing the Red Wall as a bloc of votes to be moved and the route to election victory. Instead they need to actually start listening to voters and understanding the concerns that have led them voting for considerable change on so many different occasions. They need to develop serious policy solutions to serious problems or risk a sequence of dashed hopes transforming to a more dramatic public anger.
A Timeline of Dashed Hopes
In 2016, voters in post-industrial towns were decisive in the Brexit referendum. Politicians and Southern based media rushed to the North like anthropologists on an academic tour. Everyone agreed that something had to be done to help “left behind towns” still struggling because of the collapse of heavy industry.
By the time of the 2019 election, the name of the “Red Wall” had been given to these towns. And the Conservatives made historic breakthroughs in once solidly Labour seats, following Boris Johnson’s promise to “Level Up” long forgotten parts of the country and revive local economies.
Five years later, with Levelling Up mysteriously disappearing from the Tory lexicon, almost all of the Red Wall seats turned Labour again. Labour promised to take action on regional inequalities and take public concern over immigration seriously.
Nothing ever changes
Sadly, almost ten years after the referendum and all of the chin stroking, too little has changed in post-industrial areas. This is still the case in places like my home town of Consett, once a mighty steel town, and the former pit villages that surround it and stretch across Durham and Northumberland.
Town centres continue to look ragged and down at heel. Nothing has yet emerged to replace the industries that left decades ago, with low skill, low pay, insecure jobs dominating. Social problems remain the norm.
The long-promised economic revival seems as far away as ever. Britain remains the most regionally unequal country in Europe. And politicians of all parties have consistently failed to live up to their promises around tackling immigration.
We have once again seen voters in these towns voting for a better life and making clear that they are angry about broken promises. They have made clear that they are angry at establishment parties and are now quite prepared to take a sledgehammer to the status quo and the party system.
Will this finally encourage the establishment parties to wake up and consider how they can deliver real and lasting change to voters.
Why the Red Wall is still underrepresented
Despite the Red Wall retaining its crucial electoral importance, so many elements of the establishment still completely fail to understand the Red Wall and its voters. As I made clear in my book, The New Snobbery, the political and media class is deeply unrepresentative of working class voters in the North and Midlands.
Political parties, the civil service, the political media remain very middle class and very Southern - continuing to see working class voters as subjects of curiosity, rather than based on their own lived experience.
Sadly, it means that too many of those commenting on politics and those working in politics fail to properly understand the Red Wall. They have consistently underestimated how angry people are and how determined they are to see real change.
A time for transformative change
Voters in the Red Wall have heard enough big promises. They’re sick of these promises being scuppered by political orthodoxy or Treasury bean counters. They’re sick of mainstream politicians regarding them as merely being important for their votes. And these voters stand on the verge of upending the political system forever.
The establishment parties have one last chance to move from words to delivery. They need to move from a timid incrementalism to a transformative programme designed to turn round decades of decline, narrow regional inequalities and revive long declining towns.
They need to stop saying that delivering this change is too difficult or using outdated orthodoxy as a feeble excuse for inaction.
An alternative is a total transformation of the political system.