{"id":2897,"date":"2019-10-04T13:59:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-04T13:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2897"},"modified":"2022-06-17T16:57:04","modified_gmt":"2022-06-17T16:57:04","slug":"suburbs-brexit-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=2897","title":{"rendered":"Four things you should know about the suburbs (and the Brexit vote)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In 2019 some 80 per cent of the UK live not at the heart of big cities, but in the suburbs bordering our metropolises. The suburbs are of great psephological significance to the electoral pulse<\/a> \u2013 including the Brexit vote. Yet they have tended to be comparatively overlooked in academic analyses. across disciplines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My recent collection<\/a> on the politics of the suburbs attempts to redress this balance. I write from the perspective of a sitting MP in the constituency of Ealing Central and Acton. This means I can draw on issues uncovered from the doorstep, advice surgery sessions, and correspondence with constituents. The other contributors straddle disciplinary boundaries. Between them, they go further than simply examining electoral results as they grapple with exactly what suburbs are, as well as the planning processes that lay behind their construction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. What constitutes suburbia is multiple and constantly changing <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\"\"
Figure 1: Common associations of what constitutes the \u2018suburban\u2019 <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Ealing has long prided\nitself with the epithet \u2018queen of the suburbs\u2019,<\/a> a term that has been\ntraced back to the first report of the borough surveyor in 1902 with the area\nmarketing itself as \u2018best of all worlds \u2026 excellent railway facilities \u2026 a\ncountry town near London \u2026 houses of all sizes, to suit all pockets\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But now, housing is the number one concern in Ealing Central and Acton. The issues brought before me at surgery straddle both middle class concerns about planning permission to expand existing homes from their original footprint, as well as overcrowding, repairs and homelessness. 44 per cent of former council properties are now privately rented; many rented back to Ealing council as temporary accommodation costing council taxpayers millions and inflating the benefits bill.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Precisely where we can locate and plot suburbia constantly changes. Notwithstanding the fact that the green belt girdles London, its sprawl has continued apace through the years. And private developers and, to a lesser extent, housing associations, have notably become the most prolific builders rather than councils per se.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. Suburbs are now looking the worse for wear <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Traditionally, a move to the suburb has been one that connoted a step upwards and onwards in status<\/a>. Yet there is a sense that the suburbs of today are somewhat frayed at the edges.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Specifically suburban concerns include commuting costs and quality of life issues, including public services, childcare and housing. But increasingly, poverty is alive and well in the sort of locales Ed Miliband identified as the \u2018squeezed middle\u2019 and Theresa May the \u2018just about managing\u2019. <\/a>Instead of the desirable locations they once were, suburban town centres are now looking decidedly tatty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The London borough of Ealing now has just 36 pence for every \u00a31 it had in 2010. With the rolling out of universal credit in 2018, benefits became much more of an issue than they had ever previously been. In a recent parliamentary question I highlighted how Ealing’s debt charities have told me that the majority of current clients were in work, but in debt to basic providers such as council housing departments and energy companies.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Planning processes and the structure of the built environment mean that the physical suburban landscape is changing, in addition to the social structure and its inhabitants. A Financial Times<\/em> report from 2018<\/a> notes a \u2018Hackney diaspora\u2019 of young professional families who were moving to Chingford in outer north east London from the borough on finding themselves priced out of Walthamstow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. The suburbs and the Brexit vote: the new political faultline for regional variation<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The 2016 referendum held\nby David Cameron on the UK’s EU membership has increasingly underscored and\nindeed polarised British politics. In my own seat, the result almost suggested\nthat the old Labour vs Conservative duopoly in the seat had broken down and turned\ninto a new binary of remain vs leave. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whilst one of the\ntraditional triggers identified for Brexit is \u2018white flight\u2019, presupposing the\nshift of voters away from the mixed population of the city to a more\nhomogeneous suburban setting. Yet a key strength of the suburban landscape is\nits demographic diversity, including 13,000 EU nationals across Ealing Central\nand Acton, who are increasingly vocal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Labour’s essentially\ntriangulated position in its 2017 manifesto, which respected the referendum\nresult, but argued for a customs union (effectively a soft Brexit), reflected\nthe dilemma it faces. This is summed up by Labour’s two most marginal seats:\nKensington (snatched from the Tories in 2017 by a majority of 20 with a remain\nvote of 69 per cent) and Dudley North (won by 22 votes where leave won by 71\nper cent). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remain won in a majority of big cities like Liverpool and Manchester, plus London and its suburbs. Leave won over a coalition of the electorate spanning both Surrey and Sunderland. Arguments for remain that centred on certain economic hardship and loss to follow did not tap into the greater feelings behind voting decisions, including loss of identity and the desire to \u2018take back control\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Voting patterns reflect the dynamism of the modern suburb <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Suburbs are no longer\npolitically predictable. The social and physical environment of the suburb may\nshape attitudes to some extent, but incomers have brought their politics with\nthem. The number of seats changing hands in general elections from 2005\u20132017\nillustrate how voter volatility is alive in the modern suburb. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stuart Wilks?Heeg looks in great detail<\/a> at the shifting\nfortunes of political parties in greater Liverpool commuterland. A seat\nsuch as Sefton Central displays decidedly middle class traits, but has swung\nevermore towards Labour since 1992. Arterial transport links as key to defining\nthe limits of Merseyside suburbia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, suburbs\nmight be associated with social conformity and political stability and\nconservatism with a small C, but notions of a \u2018progressive alliance\u2019 are gaining\ntraction. The result of the Richmond Park by?election of December 2016 saw\nLabour poll fewer votes than the number of paid?up members they had in the\nconstituency, with voters combining forces with the Lib Dems to overthrow\nConservative Zac Goldsmith. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2017, the Ealing\nGreen party withdrew their candidate in order to ensure my re?election as\nsitting Labour MP in return for my assurance of campaigning against Brexit,\nHeathrow expansion and climate change, and in favour of electoral reform. This\nshows suburban voters ready to be astute in forming coalitions based on ideas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We live in times where political debate and the nature of discourse has become polarised along dividing lines that are different to previous party political cleavages. The relationship between the suburbs and the Brexit vote speak to the obvious current litmus test. The only certainty in today’s politics is uncertainty.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A longer version of this article <\/a>originally appeared in the <\/em>Political Quarterly journal.<\/em> <\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2019 some 80 per cent of the UK live not at the heart of big cities, but in the suburbs bordering our metropolises. The suburbs are of great psephological significance to the electoral pulse \u2013 including the Brexit vote. Yet they have tended to be comparatively overlooked in academic analyses. across disciplines. My recent […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":172,"featured_media":2901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1390,1396,1403],"tags":[1653],"coauthors":[1652],"class_list":["post-2897","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brexit","category-uk","category-inequality","tag-suburbia"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Four-things-you-should-know-about-the-suburbs-and-the-Brexit-vote-ellie-adams-JebJZZcIMsk-unsplash-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2897","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/172"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2897"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2897\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2897"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2897"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2897"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=2897"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}