{"id":3606,"date":"2021-03-04T10:32:39","date_gmt":"2021-03-04T10:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3606"},"modified":"2021-03-04T10:37:54","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T10:37:54","slug":"the-new-political-divides-at-the-2019-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/?p=3606","title":{"rendered":"The New Political Divides at the 2019 Election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

During the 2019 election, in a country polarised by the Brexit debate with a parliament unable to resolve the issue, the Conservative party skilfully took advantage of public weariness. Boris Johnson\u2019s simple message, \u2018Get Brexit Done\u2019, came to encapsulate the election itself, finally breaking the war of attrition that had existed between the government and opposition parties since 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson lost seven per cent of 2017 Conservative voters to the Liberal Democrats and four per cent to Labour. But he made up for this by gaining 11 per cent of 2017 Labour voters, concentrated in leave-voting seats previously held by Labour. The new electoral coalition that the Conservatives built is impossible to disaggregate from the Brexit vote and the socioeconomic, geographical and cultural factors underlying it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Small groups of potential swing voters play a fundamental role in the first past the post electoral system. Importantly, the Conservative campaign message was tailored towards winning the support of a relatively small number of Labour voters prepared to switch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The death of \u2018no deal\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Johnson took over the Conservative party following the failure of Theresa May to pass her Brexit deal through parliament and in the context of a surge in support for the Brexit party. Support for a no-deal exit from the EU was remarkably high amongst Conservative voters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To the surprise of many, Johnson carried through on his threat to prorogue parliament to avoid parliamentary scrutiny. This highly performative gesture shored up Johnson\u2019s support amongst Brexit hardliners without ever taking the country close to an actual no-deal exit. His core calculation \u2013 that he had sufficient standing amongst Brexit supporters to popularise his deal \u2013 proved correct. The theme of the subsequent election changed from \u2018no deal\u2019 to \u2018deliver the deal\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Comparing Johnson 2019 to May 2017<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

May\u2019s campaign for the 2017 election was conventional, focusing on stability, strength and control of immigration. Johnson\u2019s repertoire of messages was more populist, and his campaign made a series of appeals to traditionally Labour-voting \u2018Leave\u2019 areas. On the one hand, a tidal wave of investment would be unleashed once Brexit was out of the way. On the other, the government would take proactive action to level up the UK with an \u2018infrastructure revolution\u2019 and more investment in education and the NHS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

May and her team consciously used the adage that there was \u2018no magic money tree\u2019 to criticise Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s rejection of austerity. Conversely, Johnson claimed in oneinterview to have argued \u2018with colleagues in the government\u2019 that \u2018austerity was just not the right way forward\u2019, and even made a link between the EU and increased levels of regional inequality across the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to his superior messaging, Johnson also faced a public exhausted with the occupation of the news agenda by Brexit. This allowed him to present his promise to protect the NHS and control the cost of living as an outcome of delivering his deal, at which point politics could return to \u2018normal\u2019. He identified the need to adjust Conservative messaging on the traditional left\/right scale to maximise his switchers from Labour in an unconventional, \u2018leftist\u2019 Tory campaign strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fractured politics of England and Wales <\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

A number of studies have linked adverse local socioeconomic circumstances to a rise in support for the socially conservative cultural values \u2013 associated with a rise in anti-immigrant feeling, and nativist political sentiment and identity \u2013 that correlate closely with support for Brexit. Towns and small cities, particularly in post-industrial settings, have struggled to carve out a position for themselves in an economic model which favours large urban areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The average GDP per capita in \u2018Conservative gain\u2019 seats was \u00a323,055 in 2018\u2014nearly a third lower than the \u00a332,090 found in consistently held Conservative seats. The strikingly low wages available in these former Labour seats implies the over-representation of a group of voters which has long been of interest to the major parties \u2013 from Ed Miliband\u2019s \u2018the squeezed middle\u2019, to George Osborne\u2019s \u2018hard working families\u2019 and Theresa May\u2019s \u2018just about managing\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Place over person<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Boris Johnson\u2019s arguments in the general election departed from these labels, however, through its embrace of place <\/em>over person<\/em>, directly addressing the real economic need to \u2018level up\u2019 these discontented economic geographies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He now faces a challenge of keeping together an electoral coalition comprised of voters who have potentially divergent economic interests: a traditional Conservative vote concerned with lower taxes and maintaining existing pockets of economic affluence, and a \u2018new\u2019 layer of communities demanding that the Johnson government fulfil its electoral promises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The future<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Looking forward, the Conservative vote is potentially fragile. The \u2018median voter\u2019 has attitudinal views well to the left of traditional Conservative politics. Delivering Brexit will not have the same partisan appeal at the next general election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the context of the coronavirus pandemic, the Conservatives will struggle to deliver the promise of \u2018levelling up\u2019 they made to the voters of the red wall. A future Labour campaign confronting these likely failures could do worse than learn from the clarity of messaging and argumentation that Johnson achieved in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A longer version of this piece<\/a>\u00a0appears in the\u00a0<\/em>Political Quarterly\u00a0journal.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the 2019 election, in a country polarised by the Brexit debate with a parliament unable to resolve the issue, the Conservative party skilfully took advantage of public weariness. Boris Johnson\u2019s simple message, \u2018Get Brexit Done\u2019, came to encapsulate the election itself, finally breaking the war of attrition that had existed between the government and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":231,"featured_media":3608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1395,1399,1396],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2993,2994],"class_list":["post-3606","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-comment","category-elections","category-uk"],"amp_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/The-New-Political-Divides-at-the-2019-Election-siora-photography-bvfLgWu31t8-unsplash-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606","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\/231"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3606"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3606\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3606"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3606"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3606"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/politicalquarterlyblog.preliveweb.site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcoauthors&post=3606"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}