Essex man

The "Essex man" as a political figure is an example of a type of median voter and was used to help explain the electoral successes of Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s.

Working-class English families were encouraged to leave the war-damaged slums in inner London and move to newly built council-owned properties in the suburbs and new towns in the home counties, including Basildon and Harlow in Essex.

[5] Margaret Thatcher's policies during her tenure in office from 1979–90 included: lower taxation, control of inflation and sale of council houses at subsidised prices.

[6] The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) lists the earliest reference to the Essex man as one from 7 October 1990, in an anonymous article penned by Simon Heffer for The Sunday Telegraph.

However, the 26 January 1990 issue of Campaign has the following reference: "Representative [David Amess] of new Essex man, working class, father electrician, right wing, keen hanger, noisily rambunctious, no subtlety".

[10] The man was a self-employed electrician, whom Blair met while the man was polishing his car at the weekend, and told Blair that he was an ex-Labour voter who had bought his council house, owned his own car, and wondered what the Labour Party had to offer him given the party's history of raising taxes and mortgage rates: His dad voted Labour, he said.