Warning from Essex: Labour can’t bank on working class voters returning to the fold

Essex is an odd starting point for 2019 election analysis. The Basildon bellwether is no more. The Tories hold the South Basildon and East Thurrock seat with a majority just short of twenty thousand – like the rest of the county the seat is true blue.

Given the Conservative Party’s tightening grip on this corner of the country it is little wonder that the broadcasters’ gaze has wandered elsewhere in recent years. In 2015 it was Nuneaton not the Basildon seat where reporters flocked to. While the likes of Thurrock, and Harlow, also Essex constituencies held by Labour until 2010, were similarly shunned. But, now Nuneaton is no longer news. The red wall has crumbled and Westminster’s lens is squarely focused on the debris scattered across Labour’s old-heartlands in the North and Midlands.

Move over Essex Man its Workington Man’s time to shine. It’s time to forget the 1992 Basildon declaration. While David Amess’ re-election signalled that John Major’s Conservatives would cling onto power for another five years, the flipping of Blyth Valley made clear an existential crisis facing the Labour Party. Ian Levy’s victory in Northumbria was the first of many Tory gains in former mining communities including Bolsover. An 11% swing here ousted Dennis Skinner and, more worrying still for the party, an even bigger swing gave the new Conservative MP for Bassetlaw a majority of fourteen thousand. For Jeremy Corbyn’s successor winning the next election will not be a case of one more heave.

There were long term factors which led to this result. Namely the growing disconnect between the values of an increasingly metropolitan Labour Party and its provincial voters. Yet, what made the difference this time around was these voters increased exposure to Corbyn and his lack of patriotism and competence (to put it mildly), as well as the party’s attempt to re-run the referendum. Both were an anathema to many of these former-Labour voters – as they were to Essex man and woman too.

These switches could be temporary. A tactical move to send a message to Labour about leadership and Europe. Boris Johnson recognises this, and has said so in his victory speech on the steps of Downing Street. Labour supporters should not underestimate the effort the Prime Minister will spend over the next five years ensuring these voter’s flirtation with the Tories is not fleeting. With a decent majority and phalanxes of MP’s representing northern and midland constituencies on his back benches, all calling for investment in their areas, Johnson has the ability to reshape his party and by extension make permanent his re-drawing of the political map.

Here Labour should look to Essex as a warning sign. It was Margaret Thatcher’s premiership which saw birth of a new generation of working class Conservative voters here in the 1980s. A decade in which the party offered those who had migrated to the suburbs and new towns the opportunity to buy their homes and own shares. The traditional class loyalties brought from the East-end of London by their families a few decades before vanished. It was more than just a change in voting behaviour but a complete attitude shift which defined the decade.

The consequences were profound. Even after Thatcher’s departure from No. 10 this bond between the blue collar and the blue rosette had yet to be broken. It took a mighty upheaval in Labour’s thinking to break this union. Tony Blair set his sights on the sort of man who, along with his dad, used to vote Labour but, as the story goes bought his own house, set up his own business and now wanted to get on in life. This man, dubbed Essex Man – or Mondeo Man – now supported the Tories. To win him back the party had to change. When it did Labour won big and governed the country from 1997 to 2010 with the aid of Labour MPs from Thurrock, Basildon, and Harlow.

When the party deviated from this course these voters were lost. The tribal instinct which these voters, and their parents, might have had to vote Labour disappeared in the 1980s. Their new default was to return to the Conservative fold.

Recently Labour has been able to count their blessings that the default for many working class voters in the North and Midlands has been to support Labour at the ballot box despite a succession of unpopular leaders. Thanks to the labour movements’ long history in these communities voting anything but Labour was inconceivable. Yet, as we have seen along the bank of the Thames estuary, once this commitment has been broken it will never again be so secure.

The parallels between Essex Man and Workington Man should not be overdone. In many respects the political transformation we witness last year represents a very distinct Conservativism from the freewheeling, hyper-individualism of four decades ago. Johnson, at least on the campaign trail, has offered big state spending. Unlike traditional Thatcherites, for the Johnsonians Government is the solution.

While family and flag remain a constant right now the Conservatives are unlikely to tell their newest converters to get on their bikes. Far from it, in Johnson’s Brexit Britain the jobs and investment will come to them and their communities. Whether the Prime Minister can pull this off remains to be seen. However, Labour cannot simply bank on him failing to do so, or assume that this failure alone will be enough to reverse the outcome of the 2019 election.

When the working class break tradition and vote for the Conservatives, Labour cannot dismiss it as a one-off. If the party arrogantly assumes these voters will naturally return to the fold they will find in the next general election that Bassetlaw, Bolsover and Blyth Valley remain as blue as Basildon.