Some interesting findings https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politic...e_article&utm_campaign=how_britain_voted_2019
That's the election right there. Tories took over a third if the Labour leave vote. Hence winning consuitences in the North that they haven't won in decades. When Brexit is no longer an issue iI suspect those seats to return to Labour.
It depends on how Labour responds to the drubbing, doesn't it? If they become more Torie lite, they could take the north back, but if they respond by going further to the Left, you're probably correct.
Why would more Tory lite win back the North when the North has traditionally been Labour base for decades. Labour lost there because of Brexit and the feeling that Labour has left the north behind in many ways just like the Blue wall of the upper midwest ditched Hillary and the Dems for Trump.
It depends on whether the Brexit vote was just a singular reason for them switching their vote, or if it was the straw that broke the camel’s back type situation. It seems to me that the UK is making a similar switch that the US took 30ish years ago when economic reasons largely determined a person’s party affiliation to now where more cultural reasons determining party affiliation.
https://www.theguardian.com/politic...our-to-ditch-jeremy-corbyn-misguided-ideology Tony Blair has called on Labour members to abandon the policies and political leanings of Jeremy Corbyn, claiming that his leftwing brand of “quasi-revolutionary socialism” had failed the party. In a provocative intervention, the three-time election-winning former Labour leader and prime minister said Corbyn’s “misguided ideology and terminal ineptitude” had insulted the party’s core voters. Yeah, let's hear about the failings of a guy that lost 2.5m votes between elections from a fella that lost 3.5m Jezza, even in this last election, actually got 700k MORE votes than Blair did in his last election as party leader. What's annoying is that I agree with some of the stuff he says about the clueless campaign this time around but to hear it from that pillock is more than flesh and blood can bear
It wasn't the only reason, no. Pretty much everyone in the party recognises there was more to it than that. It was the apparent abandonment of our previous position of having a soft 'labour 'brexit, (in those seats that voted leave), but also the reason for the change. People thought we'd come to the conclusion that the remain voters in the south, (often middle-class and relatively well-off), were more important than the working voters in the north and midlands. That, combined with Jezza's 'baggage' and the fact that people were simply sick of talking about brexit, was just too much. If there's one good thing about this election from our point of view it's that some of the activists from the south and university towns have actually had some contact with some of the voters I've been talking to for many, many years and, trust me... it's been an eye-opener for them. We had one guy that came up from Hackney, IIRC, who asked 'Where are the Jeremy Corbyn leaflet's, (ours only mentioned our candidate who was a local lass). That fecker didn't even last one day before boarding the train to go back 'darn sarf' TBH this is why when I've come onto these boards and seen people wittering on about us needing a 'clear, remain policy', I've thought... 'you haven't got a clue pal' As I say, we were canvassing locally between Oct/Nov last year and May this years so we KNEW what the feeling was as the position changed and we all knew to stress 'DON'T mention the national party and the leadership'. It went down like a lead balloon. I'd been hopeful the LibDems would see sense and help us sort out a sensible response but, in the absence of that, we were always going to lose and lose BIG!
Blair is a unlikable figure for many reasons but those are unfair criticisms.. he won by a landslide in 2001 so course his 2005 victory which was still comfortably btw was going to be a much smaller margin of victory. Saying that Corbyn got more votes in 2019 compared to Blair in 2005 is irrelevant just because of population increase within that 14 year period. Worst labour performance since 1935 that's what he will be remembered for. I agree with your other point. Labour going 2nd referendum and going all in the remain camp pissed off the north. Made it seemed that London and the educated and upper middle class base they have there along with Ethnic Minorities were being prioritized over their northern working class base. They have felt marginalized, ignored, disillusioned and left behind by Labour new southern coalition, voting for Brexit and for the Tories this time around was a protest vote and a reaction.
The same pattern as in the U.S., where the Dems skew young and educated, and Republicans skew the opposite. By the way, that YouGov red label is wrong, it should read "decreases" rather than "increases." Oops.
Tony Blair today: Meanwhile: Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern: Why there must be a second Brexit referendum Tony Blair: A simple referendum will solve Brexit — not a chaotic general election Tony Blair is calling for a second referendum and even Remainers think he should stay out of it Corbyn was pushed into the referendum stance by the likes of Blair. For him to now claim they should have accepted the result is nothing but rank hypocrisy.
I think you have missed his point Under this logic labour should have voted for May's deal But having not done that, they should have been again a brexit election and demanded ref 2 Likely there is a bunch of hindsight there
Well, May didn't have a 'deal' did she. She had a withdrawal agreement. I mean, sure, they could have voted for that but that would have meant May would have complete control of how the negotiations were handled. Under those circumstances it was better for us to try and sort out the 'shape' of a brexit deal with the tories which is what we tried to do. Unfortunately May, who might have accepted a 'soft' brexit deal, decided she didn't want to 'get brexit done' with the help of labour votes because it meat throwing the ERG headbangers under the bus. Er... yeah!!! That rather went by the board when the SNP and particularly the LibDems decided they DID want an election. Then we were faced with either accepting a GE and were 'up for the fight', (even though we weren't), or be dragged screaming and kicking into it which would have made us look scared of the voters. I think the nub of the issue is that anything Blair says is tainted because of his hatred of the left of the party.
That's the annoying bit but it wasn't just Blair... it was the conference as a whole. Blair's full of crap, tbh.
Seems like you hit the nail on the head https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ny...ld/europe/uk-election-labour-redwall.amp.html This constituency in Northern England Bolsover echoed your point. From the article a former Labour voter in the north says " The country’s on its backside,” she said. “I’ve unfortunately had to vote for Boris. He’s the best of a bad bunch.”
This comes back to the general problem of Corbyn being bad at politics and making the wrong strategic decisions.
Brummie has already pointed out to you that you need to be careful with assuming lots of labour voters changed sides based on anecdotes. At this stage, it seems more likely that they didn't turn out at all. Also, lots of this supposed new Tory working class constituency who trend old (50+) and lacking uni education are actually quite well off as a demo compared to the rest of the population. Meanwhile the young workers are still voting labour. So while I get this "cultural swing" idea - its age, education and wealth that is behind it. The core Tory vote is 60+ and well off compared to the national average.
Here is an interesting counter to the "Blue Wall" hot take A large proportion of the ‘Red Wall’ seats that flipped to the Tories last week are in fact nothing more than traditional marginal seats that had resisted the tide to the Conservatives in the last few elections. Most of them are pretty close to the national average on demographic indicators, housing, education, work and so on, and have a range of communities from the prosperous to the severely deprived. The anomaly in these seats was less the Conservative win this time, and rather more the failure to switch to the Tories in 2010 and 2015 as they had done on most previous occasions when there had been a change of government. A combination of long-term political drift and perhaps something about the limits of the appeal of David Cameron’s Conservatism had kept them on the Labour side despite the national change in power. The 2017 benchmark, with the Tories winning the national vote by only 2.5 percentage points, the narrowest win by anyone since February 1974, produced a few Labour gains that not surprisingly went under again when the Tories expanded their lead to 12 percentage points. Let’s take Bury North, for instance. The seat and its predecessor have only voted twice since 1955 for the party that has not won the popular vote (1979 and 2017) so it is hardly a shock that it went Conservative when the Tories were getting a significant national lead in 2019. Places such as Bury South, Bolton North East, Colne Valley, High Peak, Vale of Clwyd, Keighley, Dewsbury, Warrington South and Stockton South were all Conservative seats in 1992 and most of them were in 2015 as well. Darlington and Hyndburn, which were last Tory in 1987, the last time that the party won a double-digit victory, belong in this company. Although there are a couple of arguable cases, I reckon 20 of the Conservative gains in the imaginary wall were in the ‘perennial marginal’ or ‘marginal disguised by the fact that the Tories haven’t won an election comfortably since 1987’ category. https://thecritic.co.uk/the-myth-of-the-red-wall/
This premise is not entirely correct. Labour does indeed have some multi-decade generational issues to cope with, relating to the disappearance of the traditional "worker" - seemingly replaced by a new generation of non-unionised gig workers, service industry types etc. So you've seen multi-decadal shifts in some seats which would have contained traditional industry (e.g. mining) back in the day. This is happening to Labour in many countries. But it's not true that the "north" is always labour. Some seats are the old "mining" seats but many more are just typical demos and have been part of Tory victories before. On top of this you have generational wealth transfer. The Tory constituency is over 60 and likely wealthier than average - e.g. due to housing. But obviously this demo is not living forever
A couple of things to consider. Many of the northern seats that switched have seen significant demographic changes over the past 20-30 years. They're not university towns, so the younger population tend to move away. Since 1981, Darlington has seen its 60+ population grow significantly, and it's 18-30 population drop by a similar amount. It's the same in other Northern Tory gains like Workington and Bishop Auckland. And speaking of Bishop Auckland, it's a constituency that has always had a strong level of Tory support. There's a lot of affluent villages and a reasonably sized, very conservative market town in the boundaries. I think it only dropped under 30% Tory during the Blair years, and the Labour majority has been decreasing solidly since - it's not a massive gain going by the numbers. Each constituency really needs to be analysed separately. There will be some common trends, but also significant local factors as well
Yep exactly. This is a theme europe wide. As there are no jobs, the young people move to the boom cities and the surrounding metros. This means you get an older demo - but as we see in the UK, that demo skews wealthier than average