{"id":943,"date":"2024-04-17T10:46:12","date_gmt":"2024-04-17T09:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/?p=943"},"modified":"2024-04-17T10:46:12","modified_gmt":"2024-04-17T09:46:12","slug":"blue-collar-conservatism-how-the-conservative-party-won-the-working-class-vote-in-2019","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/2024\/04\/17\/blue-collar-conservatism-how-the-conservative-party-won-the-working-class-vote-in-2019\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Collar Conservatism: How the Conservative Party won the working-class vote in 2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The UK\u2019s general election of 2019 saw the victorious Conservative Party achieve their highest number of seats in the House of Commons since 1987, whilst Labour returned their lowest number since 1935. (Audickas et al., 2020) Although many factors had a role to play in the overwhelming success of the Conservatives, undoubtably the main concern preceding the election was the issue of Brexit. The impact of this was highlighted in Labour\u2019s loss of seats in their \u2018red wall\u2019 areas of the north and midlands of England, ones which previously were strongholds for the party, but in 2019 were won by the Conservatives. This is an indication of the rightward shift of the white British working classes in recent years, with Brexit bringing issues such as anti-immigration and social issues to the fore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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2017 vs 2019 UK General Election Results (source: CNN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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The ideological cleavage of British politics began to narrow during Tony Blair\u2019s New Labour era, with the party seeing a surge of support among the middle-classes during his time as Prime Minister. Evidence of this is shown equally through the coalition government of the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats from 2010 to 2015, the first of its kind since the end of World War II. The rise of the right-wing populist UKIP in the early 2010s among the white working-class and the election of Jeremy Corbyn, a socialist of middle-class background, as Labour Party leader in 2015, highlighted the consolidation of the abandonment of voting along class lines in the 21st century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The right-wing shift that emerged in the previous \u2018red wall\u2019 areas in the north and midlands of England in 2019 was down to several factors. Undoubtedly, Brexit had a key role to play. The Conservative Party pledge to \u2018get Brexit done\u2019 versus Labour\u2019s less than \u2018compelling narrative about the UK\u2019s future\u2019, gave them an automatic advantage. (Kenny, 2016; p. 90) The Conservatives capitalised on the growing working-class discontentment of EU membership when it came to areas such as migration and the economy. However, the Labour Party under Corbyn had a much vaguer view of what future EU membership would consist of. Corbyn, who had been a previous left-wing Eurosceptic, had the challenge of appealing to his educated, cosmopolitan voters in urban areas, who were the main beneficiaries of the UK\u2019s membership of the EU, whilst also staying true to his left-wing principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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(Source: CNN)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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As a result of this, the Conservatives also capitalised on the demographical change on the \u2018us versus them\u2019 idea. Which had previously been used as a tool for working-class mobilisation against the Conservative backed elites, was now being used by those behind the Leave campaign to refer to those in Brussels. The impact of many of the UK\u2019s population voting beyond their classes is highlighted in that \u2018the influence of class, income and left-right ideology\u2026weakened while the influence of education, age and identity attachments have strengthened.\u2019 (Sobolewska and Ford, 2020) The problem for the Conservatives in the lead up to the 2024 general election will be how they will sustain this vote with Brexit in the back of many voter\u2019s minds and issues regarding the economy and rising living costs plaguing the party.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The more pragmatic approach of the Labour Party under Keir Starmer\u2019s leadership indicates that there may be a return of some of the previous red wall seats in the upcoming election. The Conservative success in mobilising working-class voters from previous Labour strongholds has led Labour to reinvent itself. Whilst continuing the economically liberal proposals from the Corbyn era, albeit less radical with Corbyn being in favour of mass nationalisation of key sectors, Starmer has aimed to appeal to the working classes who felt they were somewhat left behind in the years preceding his leadership. Starmer has the issue of retaining the votes of those who voted for Labour under Corbyn in 2019, such as the left of the party\u2019s voter base, whilst also winning back those who flipped the red wall in 2019. In order to appeal to those white working-classes who voted Conservative in 2019, the party will aim to find a common cause that galvanises support, such as the Tories and Brexit, which will most likely aim to capitalise on the growing economic difficulties that have arisen under the Conservative Party since Brexit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To conclude, the Conservative Party had considerable success in taking advantage of the growing discontent of the white working classes in the aftermath of the 2016 Brexit referendum. It may be argued that this was merely a short-term solution for many of those in previous Labour strongholds who still had the impact of Brexit firmly in their minds in 2019. However, the long-term impact may be a result of the working-classes in areas such as the north regarding themselves as \u2018left-behind people against multiculturalism, cosmopolitanism, and political correctness.\u2019 (Solvetti, 2022) The question of whether Labour can return the red wall to vote along class lines is one of the burning questions in the lead up to the 2024 general election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bibliography <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Audickas, L., Loft, P. and Cracknell, R. (2020). UK Election Statistics: 1918-2019 \u2013 A century of elections. House of Commons Library. [online] Available at: https:\/\/commonslibrary.parliament.uk\/research-briefings\/cbp-7529\/<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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CNN, ‘How Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson would change the UK economy’, available at https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2019\/12\/10\/economy\/jeremy-corbyn-uk-election-economy-ge19\/index.html<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Flanagan, B. (2019).\u00a0How the country voted\u00a0<\/em>. Available at: https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/uk\/live-news\/uk-election-day-2019-dle-ge19-gbr-intl\/index.html.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kenny, M. (2016). Ideological Politics and the Party System. In: R. Heffernan, C. Hay, M. Russell and P. Cowley, eds., Developments in British Politics<\/em>. London: Palgrave, p.90.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sobolewska, M. and Ford, R. (2020). \u2018Brexit and Britain\u2019s Culture Wars\u2019 in Political Insight<\/em>, 11(1).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Solivetti, L.M. (2022) “Economic Reformism vs Sociocultural Conservativism: Parties\u2019 Programmes, Voters\u2019 Attitudes and Territorial Features in the UK General Elections 2019”, Social Sciences<\/em>. 11(10) pp. 469.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The UK\u2019s general election of 2019 saw the victorious Conservative Party achieve their highest number of seats in the House<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorised"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":949,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions\/949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/pb-happ\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}