We need to talk honestly and intelligently about red wall voters. That’s harder than you might think. Since the 2019 election they have been both stereotyped and sanctified. In this land of the free, we are only as free as society allows us to be. Critical view of red wall voters are considered blasphemous. The same speech control prevailed after the Brexit vote. Any interrogation of what had happened was considered a crime against democracy.
The whole nation must agree, it seems, that those in the North and North Midlands who abandoned Labour for the Tories – and only they- represent the British working classes and, furthermore, that these real Englanders must be heard and never argued with.
Both main political parties genuflect to these citizens whom Johnson successfully won over with fake promises, flattery and bombast. The PM and Starmer feign respect for and inveigle the voters. According to recent research by the Institute of Public Policy Research only 1% of Tory MPs are from a working class background. The appointment of the brash, flog-and hang-them Les Anderson shows the depth of Sunak’s cynicism. . So too this, from a leaked document by Starmer’s policy team in 2021 advising party apparatchiks to make: ‘use of the [union] flag, veterans [and] dressing smartly’.
Such simplistic answers depend on a denial of truths. Evidence of greed and corruption among many in the governing party, Truss’s economic catastrophe and the manifest failures of Brexit are leading to a mini-exodus of Tory voters . Other polls confirm that young, educated, ‘woke’ Britons of all classes and races who tend to vote Labour are feeling ignored and disillusioned. Red wall obsession is diverting both camps from such political realities.
Beware of journalists who promote the false prospectus too. Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times castigated our very own Ian Dunt for calling Anderson a ‘moron’ and praised the Nottinghamshire swing seat loudmouth, for being free of middle class guilt. Dan Hodges, in the Mail On Sunday is another groupie: ‘He speaks for a sizeable proportion of working people. He will appeal to, and reassure, elements of the Tory base that have become disillusioned with the PM’s spreadsheet managerialism.’ Lawson and Hodge, solidly middle-class, are, I reckon, excited by Anderson’s useful, performative role. No more than that. Neither has shown any solidarity with unions or, say Mike Lynch, a serious working class leader.
Well I went to Nottingham, Walsall, Birmingham and Lincoln before the Brexit vote, sat in a pub and argued with a crowd of people. It was exhausting. I did it because I wanted to listen and to put the EU case to those who were being lied to by Cummings, Johnson and others. The people I met had diverse biographies and views. Some Asians were more vociferously against the EU than white leavers; there were unabashed racists and strong anti-racists too and yes, boors like Anderson and reasonable folk who called them out. One large man in a too-small T shirt asked when people like me would fuck off back to where we belonged. His mates cheered. I replied: ‘ We are here because your empire builders were there. Go learn some history’. He swore and left. Several people thought I was brave to take him on, that someone had to.
To regard red wall voters as an undistinguished mass, or a virtuous collective or as endangered species is an insult to them and the rest of us. Working class people don’t all look and think the same. The Observer this Sunday quoted Anderson’s constituents who think he is a ‘prat’ (Cecilia Paul, 72,) or (‘archaic’), Karl Wood, 27. In May 2021, Patrick English shared findings of a large YouGov survey: ‘…rather than being a bastion of social conservativism… these constituencies up and down the North and Midlands contain a great diversity of opinions, and indeed widespread support for a range of what we might consider progressive policies and views. In other words, the Red Wall is no more socially conservative than Britain as a whole, and characterisation of voters in these areas as predominantly “small c” conservatives concerned about social liberalisation or culture wars is not supported by polling evidence.”
Professor David Edgerton, of King’s College London, is understandably exasperated by Labour’s timidity and acquiescence: ‘The phenomenon of a working-class red wall is an ideological concoction that benefits Labour’s enemies… Yet this group has come to define how Labour thinks of the working class. That the party views this Tory analysis as a bellwether of its fortunes speaks to its collapse as an independent, transformative political force. Labour undoubtedly still needs the working-class vote. Winning this means creating a Labour party for workers and trade unionists in the present day, not those of a mythologised past.’
The red wall has sucked up too much attention. Voters in those areas deserve better. Levelling up pledges need to materialise. But Conservatives and Labour need to go beyond the wall and attend to the broad, varied peoples of GB, including much maligned urbanites, unhappy shire voters, the ‘forgotten’ poor of East and South London and Southampton and Frome and Oxford. And beyond. Where are the voices speaking up for One nation Conservatism and Labourism?
I newspaper January 2023