Now, Labour must devise a “Rust Belt” strategy for the UK
Michael Moore called it back in July. He then re-called it on October 24th, just over two weeks ago. Moore knew that Donald Trump’s strategy of targeting voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan was striking at the Achilles’ Heel of the Democrats, and that many would kick back at the establishment that had abandoned them. In his article ‘5 Reasons Why Trump Will Win’, Moore said:
“Donald Trump came to the Detroit Economic Club and stood there in front of the Ford Motor executives and said if you close these factories as you’re planning to do in Detroit and planning to build them in Mexico, I’m gonna put a 35 percent tariff on those cars when you send them back and nobody’s gonna buy them. It was an amazing thing to see, no politician Republican or Democrat had ever said anything like that to these executives and it was music to the ears of people in Michigan and Ohio and Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the Brexit states.”
Trump’s message was clear and resonated with voters in the area, blaming free trade for the rapid economic decline of their communities but also referencing issues such as the Flint water scandal which Democrats and the political elite were woefully silent on.
“It used to be, cars were made in Flint and you couldn’t drink the water in Mexico. Now, the cars are made in Mexico and you cannot drink the water in Flint.”
These were the voters who turned the election for Trump. Whilst it is entirely possible, and likely, that his racist ravings and support from white supremacist groups mobilised many Republicans across America to come out in support of their candidate, the swing away from Clinton to Trump in these states suggests something else is at play. The Brexit states had, after all, voted for Barack Obama only four years earlier.
The pattern seen in the US Presidential Election is, in fact, a similar one seen during the EU Referendum. Strong support for Hillary Clinton, and the Remain vote, was on display in major urban centres. In the UK this included areas of London, Manchester, Liverpool and other major cities, whilst in Michigan it was focused around Detroit and nearby counties such as Ingham and Genesee.
Outside of these areas, however, support for Clinton appears to deteriorate the further you move out into rural areas. The same pattern appears in Ohio (shown below) where Democrat support centred around Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, with Trump taking almost every county in between. Wisconsin? Check. Pennsylvania too? Check.
The reasons for this pattern are complex and impossible to define without further research, but a few factors are worth suggesting. Firstly, in the UK and in the US, cities and their immediate suburbs are increasingly the home of the metropolitan elite and young liberals, and there appears to be an ever widening cultural gap between major cities and their surrounding areas. In part, this has been fueled by the desire to “regenerate” city centres, meaning that investment has increasingly become concentrated in major cities.
Perhaps more important has been the process of deindustrialisation due to economic and ideological factor. Residents of small towns in the UK and US find themselves competing for fewer and fewer jobs in less-skilled industries after major industry and manufacturing has moved abroad.
Infrastructure also plays a key role. While inhabitants of London, Birmingham and Manchester can generally commute, visit family or go on holiday with ease, the lack of decent infrastructure connecting smaller towns to each other and to cities leaves them increasingly isolated from centres of economic and cultural power.
So what?
While this analysis is by no means extensive, I hope that it points to an important geographical component to Trump’s strategy and victory, as well as to a similar phenomenon in the EU referendum in the UK. Given Trump’s success, I think this necessitates the development of a similar plan for Labour under Jeremy Corbyn to target the deindustrialised communities of Northern England, Scotland and Wales in 2018 and 2020.
While more or less every analyst will suggest that Corbyn’s more policies should focus more on the centre ground, and his supporters will want him to push ever further to the left, a localised strategy which appeals simultaneously to voters in Wales, the North West and North East is the party’s best chance of heading off the challenge from UKIP. Only by targeting areas such as Sunderland and Middlesbrough, the East Midlands and North Wales do Labour stand a chance of winning on a progressive platform.
So, as the beginnings of a Rust Belt strategy for the UK, I think Labour should:
- Promote decentralisation. Offering more power to local councils and city Mayors to invest in their local area.
- Support development of transport infrastructure. Making local connectivity a priority, and not vanity projects like HS2 and Heathrow expansion.
- Develop a media strategy for each region. Labour needs more media presence across the country, with local MPs co-operating to support a common narrative.
- Visit the North, Midlands and Wales regularly. Corbyn is currently failing to appeal to voters across the country, so a concerted effort is needed to make that appeal direct and to back it up with concrete policy.
- Develop a narrative. There are pockets of poverty, deprivation and disillusionment across the country, including areas of the South West and London as well as old industrial communities elsewhere. A clear message as to why those communities have been left behind is vital, along with a manifesto of how they will be brought back.
This is only a start, but I want to take the positives from last night’s result and learn the lessons of how to win an election against all the predictions of the pollsters. If Labour and Corbyn’s team can learn them too, then perhaps things might not be so bad after all.
