Red wall (British politics)
The red wall is a term used in British politics to describe the UK Parliament constituencies in the Midlands and Northern England that have historically supported the Labour Party.
[14] In 2014, political scientists Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin documented the erosion by the UK Independence Party (UKIP) of the Labour-supporting working-class vote in their book Revolt on the Right.
[26] In late 2024, a few dozen Labour MPs formed the 'Red Wall Caucus' to push the government to be more vocal on immigration and stop Reform UK gaining in their constituencies.
[41][42] In the aftermath of the 2019 general election, author and Newcastle University lecturer Alex Niven said that it was "a convenient term of journalese that seemed to arise in the last days of the 2019 campaign to describe a large, disparate part of the country north of Oxford.
In July 2020, Rosie Lockwood from the Institute for Public Policy Research said: "For years the Westminster establishment has sought to define the north through soundbites.
[44] In July 2021, following Labour's narrow victory in the Batley and Spen by-election, David Edgerton, professor of Modern British History at King's College London, denounced the concept of the red wall and pointed out that "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.
In January 2022, Anthony Wells, director of Political Research at YouGov, wrote an article titled "Stop obsessing about the Red Wall".
In it, he criticised political commentators and politicians who use the term "based upon a perception of what the author's idea of a stereotypical working class Conservative voter would think, rather missing the point of James [Kanagasooriam]'s original hypothesis that voters in those areas were actually demographically similar to more Tory areas ... [T]hese were seats that for cultural reasons were less Conservative than you would have expected given their demographics.
"[47] David Jeffery, a lecturer in British Politics at the University of Liverpool, stated that "the Conservative party's new supporters aren't really that different from their old ones".
"[48] In May 2021, YouGov released the results of a large survey that "somewhat contradicts 'evidence' from vox-pops and commentary on the underlying reasons for voters moving away from Labour in these constituencies."
Patrick English wrote: "Our survey shows that rather than being a bastion of social conservativism within Britain, these constituencies up and down the North and Midlands contain a great diversity of opinions, and indeed widespread support for a range of what we might consider progressive policies and views.
"[49]Responding to this survey, Jeremy Corbyn's former senior policy adviser Andrew Fisher insisted that the concept of the "mythologised Red Wall" was "part of a decades-long agenda aimed at undermining progressive causes.
"[50] In Tribune, Jason Okundaye warned Labour not to forget about its "other heartlands", namely Black and South Asian voters in urban areas.
[55] This resulted in the borderline extinction of Scottish Labour MPs, as only Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) retained his seat whilst 40 other constituencies were won by the SNP.
In 2020, a Yellow halo of Liberal Democrat targets was identified, including south-west London and eastern Surrey, Oxfordshire, Hampshire and Cambridgeshire, corresponding in part to the Home Counties.
Journalist Nicholas Burgess Farrell has used the term red wall to describe the red belt, historically This included the held seats of Ed Davey in Kingston and Surbiton, and Layla Moran in Oxford West and Abingdon, as left-wing supporting regions of Italy, such as Emilia-Romagna, that have been under comparable pressure by Matteo Salvini and the right-wing populist Lega party.
