Polling shows voters in the ‘red wall’ and Swindon aren’t as different as they may seem – and the right policies appeal to both groups
- James Johnson is co-founder of JL Partners
It has become common in recent weeks to say that the Conservatives face a clear, unavoidable choice: the red wall versus Notting Hill, north versus south, the “just about managing” versus “affluent Britain”. They can be the party for blue-collar, working-class voters in the north, or the party for dinner-party liberals in the south.
The problem is, this choice is out of date. Though the Conservatives are ascendent in the red wall, some of those liberal-leaning seats have been out of reach for the party since 2017. Formerly Tory seats such as Brighton Kemptown, Cardiff North or Battersea now have Labour majorities of more than 5,000. In the south, Labour holds three-quarters of the seats it won from the Conservatives in 2017, and there were swings towards Labour in most of them in 2019, despite the party’s unpopularity nationwide. Kensington is just about a Conservative seat, but it is an outlier: the Tories hold no other seat in the country like it, and their vote share has declined there in the past two elections.
