LOOK LEFT / TT21
DOAA SHABBIR / LMH, PPE
REBUILDING THE RED WALL?
DANNY LEACH / PEMBROKE, PPE
The so-called red wall is a frustrating concept for many reasons. Arguably, some areas of the North have been Labour heartlands for the last 30/60/90 years (delete as appropriate), but the “Red Wall” is a completely ahistorical concept, invented by politicos in 2019. It did not exist as a political idea before that time, and the closest analogue is the Democratic “Blue Wall” across the North-Eastern USA. Aside from the fact that on any electoral map, these seats form a pathetic “wall”, it feels like the term now links seats which just happen to vote Labour and aren’t in city centres. Many of these haven’t always been Labour, such as Batley and Spen, which has been Labour since 1997, but which was a marginal Tory seat before that. Others went Tory in previous landslides, such as 1983 or 1959. For a long time, they have been seats with the demographics of marginal seats, but more Labour voting patterns. Now it seems like they are simply standard marginals, maybe it’s time to drop this overused and under-understood term.
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After the 2019 election, Sky News’ Beth Rigby commented that the ‘red wall’ was not “wobbling”, but “obliterated”. Labour lost 20% of its 2017 general election support in ‘red wall’ seats - northern constituencies historically won by Labour. This phenomenon was consolidated by Labour’s loss of the 2021 Hartlepool by-election. Leaked party documents suggest this shift in support dates back to the Blair era. Between 1997 and 2015, Labour’s vote share fell by 25% in Hartlepool, 23% in Bolsover and 24% in Sedgefield. Despite their large share of national votes in 2017, Labour lost six long-term Red Wall seats and many more became marginal. Across 41 northern seats, the Tory vote increased from 29% in 2015 to 42% in 2017. Internal documents from Labour’s head of research investigating the reasons for this ‘long retreat’, reveal that voters could not describe ‘what or who Labour stands for’. This seems to go hand-in-hand with voters’ decreased association of Labour with the working class since the Blair era, which Rayson (2021) believes was a major contributor to the decrease in support amongst mostly working-class Northern Communities. Evans (2017) argues that since the development of “New Labour” in the 1990’s, ‘political parties have chosen to not represent … class differences’, both through policy positions and the increasingly bourgeoise profiles of politicians. Austerity at local levels, often administered by the more centrist Labour councillors in the North also created a distrust in Labour- one voter in the region was reported as expressing: “How can I trust Labour to give me free broadband, when they can’t even keep the local library open?” (Booth, 2020). Labour’s recent victory in the Batley and Spen by-election may seem to offer a glimpse of redemption. However, if the party wants to truly reconnect to its former voter base, it needs to vastly re-strengthen its connection and commitment to the working-class in order to be trusted again.
