Knocking Down the Red Wall

Why did the Tories do so well in the recent council elections and in the Hartlepool by-election? Admittedly, it wasn’t all bad for Labour, especially in the mayoral elections. However, they should have done better, mid-term, in the councils. The obvious reason for the Tory success is that the vaccination roll-out has helped people to forget the catastrophic loss of life in this country in the two waves of coronavirus, and Boris’ other cock-ups. And it sometimes feels safer to vote for the people with more experience in dealing with the mess, even if they’ve caused some of it.

However, what worries a (soft) left winger like me are results like Hartlepool, where we see another example of the knocking down of the ‘red wall’, the Labour heartlands turning blue. This is a longer term trend which will take something seismic to reverse it, like the blunder of all blunders by Johnson, added to the election of a charismatic Labour leader (remember them?).

From https://metro.co.uk/2021/05/07/

A recent news item illustrated this problem. It was a brief TV interview with an elderly man in Batley and Spen (near Leeds), the next constituency up for by-election. It is the constituency of the murdered Jo Cox and a Labour ‘safe seat’. However, will it be another loose brick in the red wall? The man said that he had always voted Labour in the past but would probably vote Conservative this time, because (words to the effect of) ‘although I don’t think Boris Johnson is a good prime minister, the Tories are nearer to how people like me think’.

It concerns me that the man in Batley and Spen wants to vote for a party simply because it appears to agree with him. He’s not that bothered about finding out which party is acting in his interests, which party is for him. The interview didn’t proceed to find out what it was that the Tories stood for that made sense to him. I can only conjecture. Are there are too many foreigners? Is it to do with Brexit (isn’t that over now)? Does he want a party that will take us back to the 1950s? Why else would he vote Tory?

So, while hearing the message that ‘Labour needs to get back in touch with its traditional voters’, I’m not sure how the Labour party reaches people in these towns like that man (or at least how I’m assuming him to be) without surrendering its ideals. Where people most need Labour policy, that is the poorest members of our society, people in high rise flats with suspicious cladding, people whose benefits take year on year knocks, people in a dull job based on zero hours contracts, not to mention people in our health service – they will probably vote Labour if they vote at all. All of the ten poorest towns and cities in Britain still have Labour councils except Burnley and Hartlepool (both no overall control).

From https://metro.co.uk/2021/05/07/

But if you’re generally OK, maybe your attention turns elsewhere. Boris has got the appeal of the cheeky villain who can look vulnerable or concerned when he needs to, and he’s not unlike members of our population who fiddle their tax and generally get round regulations where they can. Perhaps they see themselves in him. I don’t know – please explain. Maybe the spectre of the hard left in control of Labour has not been put to bed by the election of Keir Starmer. But then he probably can’t persuade the red wall people that he’s on their side any more than Corbyn.

The only hope for the left and centre lies in the American experience. Donald Trump was defeated because people turned out to vote him out in their millions. Very nearly every vote that wasn’t for him was against him. That isn’t the case in our first-past-the-post constituency system. So, while the diversity of parties might be good for our local elections, where the Liberals and Greens get some say in running our councils and provide a different perspective to the big two, it's very bad for our general elections, where the Tories sweep to landslides with 43% or so.

At the next election, the parties that are opposed to the Tories just have to work together, irrespective of how much pride swallowing is required. I like the Greens, but Jonathan Bartley crowing because they had defeated Labour in a council seat in Reddish (between Manchester and Stockport) is not a good omen for 2024. It must be clear that a vote against Johnson is only worthwhile if it is a vote that will help to get him out, not just a little symbolic gesture that shows you like the Greens or Liberals but know that they haven’t a chance of getting in.

OK, Corbyn wasn’t the right man to bring these parties together in 2019, but maybe Starmer (or Burnham or Nandy) will have a better chance of doing so in 2024. If they don’t form a general election alliance, even a coalition, then there’s only going to be one result. Another brick and another five years for the Blue wall.