Katie Roche's Blog

Why Labour's Red Wall Keeps on Crumbling

The UK’s local and mayoral elections were on Thursday. And results have been coming in all through Friday and Saturday. In this election, Labour lost many solid “red wall” seats. Including the parliamentary seat of Hartlepool in the by-election. These are seats Labour can’t afford to lose. I live in the red wall. My local council stayed Labour. But a former Labour seat went Conservative and another was very close (Labour clung on with less than 20 votes). In the 2019 general election, the decline of the red wall was blamed on Corbyn. Now Starmer is at the helm. But seats are still being lost. Why? There are two big issues that are costing Labour votes in the north: Brexit and identity politics.

The first problem is Brexit. Northern England is a big Brexit area. But Labour is pro-EU. They haven’t always been. In the referendum, they were neutral. And in the 2017 general election, they promised to honour the referendum results. This promise has since been dropped. I didn’t vote for Brexit, but I know a lot of people who did. And I understand why they did. Many blamed EU migration for issues like unemployment, strains on the NHS and housing shortages. That's not the whole cause of these issues. But while Labour were in power, they did nothing to correct these misconceptions. For many years, politicians- both Labour and Conservative- insisted the UK was better off in the EU. But the public perceived the EU was bringing Britain to its knees. So of course, they voted to leave.

Also, the north didn't enjoy the same benefits of the EU as the south did. Take freedom of movement as an example. A person in the south could take the Eurostar or the ferry across to France and have a day trip. It's easy to travel to Dover or get the train at St. Pancras if you live down south. But the north is further away. London is also a more affluent place. With people who travel often for business purposes, and for leisure. That’s why freedom of movement is more important to Londoners. They don’t want to waste time in the airport or a ferry terminal waiting for their papers to be checked. But for many people, a yearly holiday to Spain is all they see of Europe. So freedom of movement doesn’t matter to them.

As well, the north didn't benefit from immigration as much. It didn’t attract business investment, like in the south. Imagine this: you’re a big international company. You want to have UK headquarters. Where do you put them? A northern town with poor transport links, high unemployment and few amenities? Or London? The big city that’s packed with world-famous attractions, is easy to get to and entices workers from across the globe? Which is why there are fewer high-skilled jobs in the north than in the south. Most EU migrants who came to the north did manual jobs, like working in factories. There is also high unemployment. And that means there’s more competition for jobs. A person can take a job they’re overqualified for more easily than they can take a job they’re underqualified for. So low-skilled workers are hit hardest by immigration.

Consequently, northerners got the downsides of frictionless travel. While London got the upsides. But Labour doesn’t care. Or even understand the problems with the EU. They think the only reason people voted leave was bigotry. Telling someone they’re a bigot isn’t going to get their vote. Brexit voters aren’t the devil incarnate. They voted to send a message to out-of-touch politicians, based on the failure of those politicians to assuage their concerns. And Labour have continued not to listen.

This brings us to identity politics. In my experience, most identity politics proponents are middle-class, university educated people from London or the south-east. Their only experience of privilege is around identity. Class doesn’t matter to them. Indeed, the aim of identity politics isn’t to make society more equal. It’s to have a society where the elite is more diverse. They don’t want to end poverty. They merely want to have fewer minorities in poverty. It’s accepting the capitalist system.

They’re also a self-righteous bunch. They treat their viewpoints as if they were facts rather than opinions. As if the only reason someone disagrees with you is because they’re not clever enough to understand your perspective. You disagree and they tell you to “educate yourself”. Don’t they see how insulting that is? They’re calling people stupid. The whole point is to intimidate people into agreeing.

But northerners are straight-talking people who don’t take nonsense. We’re not interested in critical race theory or “why sex isn’t binary”. To most northerners, if the worst thing you’ve ever endured is “feeling invalidated”, you’ve had an easy life. On the other hand, if you’re sat in a freezing cold pre-fab without enough food to eat or money for the electric meter, you’re probably not feeling you have “white privilege” or “cis privilege”. Or any other kind of privilege. Having politicians and activists tell you you’re privileged isn’t to resonate with you. Especially when many of those people are wealthy.

Meanwhile, Labour ignores issues that are important to northerners. For instance, bedroom tax, where the housing component of universal credit is reduced if a person is judged to have more bedrooms than they need. That disproportionately affects people in the north, where more council properties are houses or larger flats. Many people live in these properties because there isn’t anywhere else to live. This policy is causing many people to struggle financially. But when was the last time you heard about it? Probably not for a while. Which is an example of how Labour has ignored its base.

Labour needs to get back in touch with northerners. It needs to understand why people voted for Brexit. It must stop criticizing its base. But most importantly, it needs to focus on the things that matter to ordinary people. Statues of historical figures or waiting times for sex reassignment don’t get people fired up. Material issues matter. Issues like jobs, the NHS and housing. That’s how you win in the north.

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