The Great Realignment of British Politics
What happens when the left leaves behind its base?
Lost in all the reporting the coronavirus pandemic which almost immediately followed it, the deep and profound impacts of the 2019 UK election did not receive the breadth and depth of coverage that they otherwise deserved. While understandable, this lack of analysis is still an undoubtable shame, because the results point to profound and often-unacknowledged political trends that will shape many election cycles to come - both in the UK and across the Western world.
For those who missed it entirely, the 2019 UK general election delivered a landslide win to ex-London Mayor and part-time toilet brush impersonator Boris Johnson’s centre-right Conservative Party, primarily at the expense of long-time MP and unrepentant Nicolas Maduro fanboy Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing Labour Party. Contrary to beliefs about the ‘electoral cost of ruling’, Johnson became the second person in British history to lead his party to a fourth term in office and paved the way for the passing of his Brexit deal through the House of Commons.
On the Labour side, there was ostensibly much soul-searching about what went wrong. While a portion of the blame inevitably fell on the soon-to-be-axed Labour leader Corbyn, the man himself, whose campaign was dogged by party defections and allegations of antisemitism, blamed Brexit. Claiming, in the aftermath of his shellacking, that “despite our best efforts the election became mainly about Brexit”, and that this was apparently the reason for his party’s defeat.
Brexit notwithstanding, is it possible that there were more complex and deep-seated trends with which the outcome of the 2019 election can be better explained?
Admittedly, a so-called ‘Brexit election’ would not have played in Corbyn’s favour, given that his Brexit policy was not only poorly understood by the electorate, but wholly bizarre and unpopular. Indeed, his strange idea to hold a second referendum in which he, as the Prime Minister, would somehow take a neutral position, was equal parts inept and unconvincing. That aside, the excuse of Brexit did provide Corbyn with a believable cover to hide under as his political aspirations went up in an inferno of a comparable size and intensity to that which engulfed the Reichstag building in 1933.
Brexit notwithstanding, is it possible that there were more complex and deep-seated trends with which the outcome of the 2019 election can be better explained? That is certainly the view of British academics David Cutts, Matthew Goodwin, Oliver Heath, and Paula Sturridge in a recent paper titled “Brexit, the 2019 General Election and the Realignment of British Politics”, and published in The Political Quarterly. Their conclusion, which is both profound and well-argued, is that what happened on that cold December day reflects “a continuation of longer-term trends of dealignment and realignment in British politics”.
This process of ‘dealignment and realignment’ that Cutts et al. refer to began not in 2016 with the Brexit vote, but in the early 2000s when Tony Blair’s Labour government presided over the beginning of a weakening of the connection between the party and the working classes in their traditional heartlands. For a long time, this process only manifested itself in increased rates of voter apathy and the occasional spasm of support for the far-right BNP and populist-right UKIP.
With Brexit, this feeling in the so-called “left-behind” traditional Labour areas in England’s North and Midlands unified behind a political cause, thanks in no small part to the tireless campaigning of the divisive Nigel Farage. Brexit, seen in this way, was not the cause of the drastic change of Britain’s underlying political landscape, but a consequence of it.
The parties of the left are moving further away from the views of the voter base that they were often founded to explicitly represent…
Seizing the opportunity presented by a sizeable coalition of disenfranchised working-class social conservatives, Conservative Party strategists expertly pounced. Ditching David Cameron’s brand of ‘posh-boy’ technocratic liberalism in favour of a more socially conservative approach, Johnson was able to skewer Corbyn’s Labour and turn the red heartland blue. Although this approach had been attempted under Teresa May in 2017, Johnson is a far better political campaigner and a more competent operator, not that the latter was an overly high benchmark to surpass.
… leaving the door open for parties of the right.
Out went the corporate internationalism best exemplified by Cameron’s Chancellor George Osbourne, and in came talk of a “reformed” immigration policy, and being “tough on crime”. More left-wing economic proposals, such as a stated ambition to address regional inequality, also entered the manifesto of a Party historically wedded to austerity: all to attract disenfranchised ex-Labour voters.
Labour, on the other hand, found itself vulnerable to this kind of Conservative electoral mobilisation. It was, and indeed still is, caught between its lower-class, lesser-educated, and socially conservative traditional heartlands, and the wealthier, higher-educated, and socially liberal voter block that predominates in London and the South East. The former who believes the latter to be unpatriotic, latte-sipping snowflakes, and the latter who believes the former to be racist, beer-sculling Neanderthals.
This political reality limited Labour’s ability to counter the Tory offensive, and ultimately in 2019, in the words of Cutts et al. “the uneasy coalition of its traditional heartlands [and the] more Remain and liberal seats in the south, that Labour had managed to keep together in 2017, fell apart at the seams”. Far from being a story of Brexit alone, the big story of the 2019 UK election is one of UK Labour’s growing disconnect with its traditional base, and the Conservative’s skilful use of socially conservative messaging to capitalise on this.
Moreover, this trend is not just evident in the UK. Across the West, and to a lesser extent even here in Australia, the parties of the left are moving further away from the views of the voter base that they were often founded to explicitly represent. This is leaving the door open for parties of the right, which have exploited it to varying degrees.
In the years ahead it may well be that the long-forgotten “left behinds” and the working classes will decide the political fate of many a party and nation. And unless parties of the left can reconnect with this group while also not losing the equally necessary support of more affluent metro voters, their outlook is bleak.
Acknowledgements: As you will probably have guessed reading this, David Cutts, Matthew Goodwin, Oliver Heath, and Paula Sturridge’s recent article for The Political Quarterly titled “Brexit, the 2019 General Election and the Realignment of British Politics” (2020) was invaluable in the construction of this essay. It can be found here, and is well worth the read.
