2019 General Election Fallout
Obviously this is linked to deindustrialisation and Leave/Remain issues but something that has been less remarked upon is that, on the basis of last night’s General Election, one of the starkest divisions in our country is between urban and rural communities.
That becomes clear when you look at the results map and see the areas where the Labour vote held up:
London, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Nottingham, Brighton, Newcastle, Sunderland, Hull, Bradford, Leeds, Leicester, Southampton, Coventry, Sheffield, Bristol, Cambridge, Canterbury — virtually all of England’s biggest cities (by population or metropolitan area) produced Labour returns in this election. But even in these places, the further away from the city centre you get, the more likely the constituency is to vote Conservative.
This has been the case forever, but the difference between the two are so pronounced after last night.
It seems counter-intuitive. Cities are usually depicted as uncaring, unfriendly, impersonal places whereas the countryside held up as a shining light of community spirit, where everyone knows each other and chips in to help each other out.
In my experience, the opposite is true. The population density and the logistics of living in a city mean that you’re forced to interact with people all the time. Living as part of a collective is an unavoidable reality of your day-to-day life that’s reinforced constantly.
In rural areas, you can be physically isolated in a way that’s not possible in a city. It makes it much easier for ideas about self-sufficiency and individualism to take hold. It’s much easier to think that you can get through life off your own back when you live in your own pocket of land with you family that’s removed from everyone else.
Even stuff like how you get around has an impact. Driving a car is a solitary, independent experience. Relying on public transport, getting on the bus or the tube is a collective experience. It influences how you perceive the world and affects what sort of messaging is going to have appeal.
Finding a way to bridge that gap and cut through to rural voters is going to be vital for the next Labour leadership.
There’s been an abundance of mud-slinging, hand-wringing, and finger pointing in the immediate aftermath of last night’s General Election results, most of it quite rightly levelled at Jeremy Corbyn as leader and the divisiveness of the Brexit vote. Both of those factors clearly contributed to the collapse of the party’s vote %, but there’s been a few talking points that don’t quite ring true.
One that seems to keep cropping up is this idea that Labour have left behind/taken for granted working class communities. I’m not really sure that’s entirely the case based on results.
This article is based on a report from The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (which assesses levels of income, employment, education, health and crime as well as housing services and living environment) and features a map that makes interesting reading in parallel with the General Election results map:
Broadly speaking, the most deprived areas still voted for Labour. 9 out of the 10 local authorities with the highest proportion of deprived neighbourhoods voted Labour in the 2019 General Election (The Conservatives gained Burnley and held both Blackpool North & Cleveleys and Middlesbrough South & Cleveland East though).
It’s in deprived constituencies that are slightly less severely affected, along the Scottish Border, in Yorkshire/Staffordshire, in the East Midlands that the Conservatives made headway.
Likewise, 8 out of the 10 local authorities with the highest level of relative child poverty after housing costs (from this Guardian article based on a Loughborough University study) voted for Labour. (The Conservatives held Pendle and gained Peterborough. Westminster North was a Labour hold and the Cities of London & Westminster was a Conservative hold, so not sure exactly which constituency the study is referring to).
Perhaps it’s not right to equate “deprived areas” and “working class areas” but there seems to me to be a lot of crossover between traditional working class concerns and the measures that are used to evaluate deprivation.
So, from my perspective, it’s more accurate to suggest that Labour have lost a certain type of working class voter rather than saying that they’ve lost their capacity to speak to working class voters. There’s still strong support for the party among the most deprived regions in the country and in city centres across England but they’ve lost ground with traditionally working class communities in more rural areas.
