Labour didn’t lose its ‘red wall’ – it never had one | David Edgerton

The idea that working-class people voted Labour until Brexit came along is a fiction only the Conservatives benefit from

One of the most popular explanations for Labour’s poor electoral performances in both Hartlepool and Batley and Spen is that a mythical group of working-class people voted solidly for Labour until Jeremy Corbyn and Brexit came along. This idea is stubbornly persistent in political analysis, yet it’s bunk. Labour has seen its vote share collapse, both nationally and in these seats, three times over the last 50 years. Indeed, the belief that working-class people traditionally voted Labour has only been true (and barely so) for a mere 25 years of British history, and a long time ago.

The working classes of the Edwardian years, from where our cloth-cap-and-shawl images of miners, shipbuilders and textile workers come, mostly voted Liberal and Tory. In the interwar years when Labour first stood as a national party, the Tories always got more votes. Labour’s best performance was in 1935, when it secured 38.6% of the vote. But at the time, the working classes accounted for 75% of Britain’s population, and many of them voted Tory.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/3k0WiXK