Never such innocence again.
Ashfield, Bishop Auckland, Blyth Valley and more: the winning of all those and other historically Labour, working-class, and Brexit-backing constituencies in the North and Midlands in 2019 was a totemic moment. The Red Wall fell. But now those first-time MPs are facing their imminent P45s from the electorate. They are looking for someone to save them from defeat – or to blame for it.
Which raises the question: who speaks for the Red Wall?
When Richard Tice unveiled Lee Anderson as Reform’s first – only? – ever MP on Monday, he claimed the Labour councillor turned Tory Deputy Chairman would now be his Red Wall “champion”. In an entirely unconnected move, yesterday’s Times announced Johnson would return in Rishi Sunak’s general election campaign, campaigning in seats he won from Jeremy Corbyn in 2019.
But Sunak deploying his predecessor but one would be highly embarrassing. He once claimed he was the “most Northern Tory Chancellor ever”, an unusual move for Southampton’s most famous son. On entering Number 10, his Cabinet choices and professed fealty to the 2019 manifesto suggested he grasped that reassembling Johnson’s coalition was his only path to re-election.
Half-a-dozen re-sets later, and it’s hard to say the same now. The Prime Minister has scrapped any attempt to be Johnson-but-serious to indulge his own whims. Even if we can never be quite certain what Red Wall voters wanted when they went to the polls on the 12th of December 2019, we can imagine it wasn’t Sunak, Jeremy Hunt, and David Cameron plotting to abolish A-Levels.
It’s no surprise Sunak is currently on track to lose every Red Wall seat that the Tories picked up at the last election. But rather worryingly for the Prime Minister, the Conservatives are also squeezed by their growing alienation from London and the broader South-East. The much-heralded realignment has failed to win the Tories a new heartland, yet alienated them from their old one.
What is going on? It would help define what we mean by Red Wall. The term was first coined by James Kangasooriam in 2019. It may have become synonymous, post-Johnson’s victory, with an archetype of a depressed Labour-voting Northern area that turned unexpectedly blue. But that wasn’t quite what Kangasooriam originally meant. The readily employed cliché has evolved.
What Kangasooriam meant by it was a stretch of seats from North Wales, into Merseyside, Warrington, Wigan, Manchester, Oldham, Barnsley, Nottingham, and Doncaster, whose voters, based on fundamentals like incomes and levels of education, should be Conservatives, but weren’t. Historic cultural reasons stopped them from voting Tory despite growing their material wealth.
Lewis Baston has expanded on this. He posited that there were two types of Red Wall seat: those that were marginals that hadn’t been Conservative since the 1980s or 1990s due to the lack of a substantial Tory majority – like Darlington, High Peak, and Hyndburn – and those seats that had genuine deep Labour histories, such as Bassetlaw, Bolsover, and Anderson’s own Ashfield.
Baston separates these as bellwethers that would have turned Tory in 2010 or 2015 if Cameron had pulled his finger out, and those former mining seats and single-industry towns where Labour hadn’t lost an election since 1945, 1935, or even 1922. The former voted for Margaret Thatcher; the latter are the sorts of places where her name is still spat out in disgust.
Why did they turn blue in 2019? In the former, the sheer drop in the Labour vote in 2017 meant they were easy pickings for the Tory campaign. But something had had to profoundly change in the latter for them to consider breaking from Labour. Brexit has provided that catalyst. It must be remembered that most of the increase in the Tory vote across the Red Wall came under Theresa May.
Yet May’s inability to get Brexit done opened the door to a Prime Minister who would: Johnson. But his electoral strategy was largely the same as hers: to show that his Conservatives weren’t your father’s Tory Party. The difference was that, in 2017, Corbyn wasn’t the toxic candidate he would be rendered by the Salisbury poisoning, Brexit dithering, and Labour’s antisemitism shame.
Nonetheless, bringing back Johnson might bring Sunak little benefit. Deprived of Brexit and Corbyn, how much of an appeal does the ex-Prime Minister really have? His supporters would point to his abilities as a campaigner and his Heineken ability to reach parts of the country other Conservatives can’t reach. Remember the “We Love Boris” sign? Some voters genuinely adore him.
Yet Johnson must have been the most unpopular majority-winning Prime Minister ever. Since then, his record in government has soured many voters on him. If they now look back at him fondly, it is only a reflection of how poor a job Sunak is doing. But those still toasting the King Across The Water forget what a shambles he was at running a government. He authored his own misfortune.
But his enthusiasm for the nebulous concept of “levelling-up” pointed towards how the Conservatives could overcome Thatcher’s legacy. Brexity Hezza! He had planned to spend £100 billion on roads, rail, and other infrastructure projects across the Red Wall: an interventionist, big-state Toryism to show the provinces Westminster cared. But Covid wrecked the public finances straight away.
Red Wall voters were promised a reverse of the Beeching Cuts. They got a few park benches. It’s hard to win voters over by plying their mouths with gold if there is no money to spend. Attempts to pivot to culture wars instead – such as over small boats – cannot replace seven consecutive quarters of lost growth, or for a government that promised control enabling unprecedented migration.
In expressing those frustrations, Anderson seems well-poised to give a voice to disillusioned 2019 voters. He seems to track their journeys perfectly: an ex-miner turned Labour councillor turned Brexiteer turned Tory turned GB News fan turned Sunak critic. But Anderson’s vision is a backwards one. His defection speech was empty nostalgia. A fitting tribute to the miners’ strike, perhaps.
Time will tell if he saves his seat by hitching himself to a party run by golf club bores, for golf club bores. But to think that the Tories can win back the Red Wall by aping his approach is delusional. Sunak is losing his grip on the North and Midlands for the same reason he is losing support across the country: people are getting poorer. Falling living standards mean no re-election.
This is bad news for those Red Wall MPs still getting used to life in Parliament. If they haven’t already found alternative employment, they should get a move on. But there is some hope. Many Red Wall voters may never trust the Tories again after our abysmal failure to deliver on our promises. But the Labour link has been broken. There is no enthusiasm for Keir Starmer, only despair and regret.
A party – perhaps called the Conservatives, perhaps whatever emerges after a record defeat – vigorously focused on improving the quality of life of Red Wall voters can win them back. But it needs a leader. Someone with a proven track record – in 2004, 2016, and 2019 – in understanding what Northern voters want. Someone with a plan to deliver. Someone with the focus Johnson lacked.
Anybody got a number for Dominic Cummings?