The British general election of 2019, part 1: Corbyn blocked out by Boris in old northern heartlands
The 2019 general election in Great Britain will be remembered for three pivotal events: the wipe-out of Labour in its old northern and Midlands heartlands (outside the big cities), the re-election of one of the most extreme Conservative governments of modern times, and the quashing of any hopes for a re-run of the EU referendum or stopping Brexit.
The surprise exit poll proved to be almost entirely accurate-it predicted a Conservative majority of 86 and the final Conservative majority was 80, the biggest since 1987; they won 365 seats, just 11 fewer than in 1987, one of Margaret Thatcher's infamous treble-figure landslide victories (the other being 1983, of course). The Conservatives gained 47 seats overall; however, it was the type of seats they gained from Labour that stood out most of all. Their capture of Blyth Valley, a former mining seat which had been held by Labour since 1935, set the tone for the entire election, which saw them gain the following Labour strongholds that had been Labour-held since 1945 or even earlier (or would have been in terms of predecessor seats): Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield, North West Durham, Leigh, Heywood & Middleton, Stoke-on-Trent North (where I was the Green Party candidate), Stoke-on-Trent Central, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Don Valley, Rother Valley, Penistone & Stocksbridge, both West Bromwich seats, Wakefield, Workington, Great Grimsby, Ashfield, Bassetlaw, and most strikingly Bolsover, bringing an end to the 49 year long parliamentary career of the "Beast of Bolsover", Dennis Skinner. Burnley also fell to the Conservatives for the first time since 1910 and its former Liberal Democrat MP, Gordon Birtwhistle, polled as low as 9%. The normally Labour-friendly suburban conurbational marginal seats of Birmingham Northfield, Bolton North East, Dudley North, Wolverhampton North East, and both Bury seats also fell (by only 105 and 402 votes respectively in both Bury seats, though) as did several of Labour's surprise gains of 2017, such as Ipswich and Lincoln, traditionally known for being bellwether seats. Blackpool South, which in common with traditional seaside resorts had previously seen a long-term Conservative decline since Labour first won it in 1997, returned to the Conservative fold. The six seats the Conservatives gained from Labour in 2017 all saw their majorities increase by more than 10,000 in every case except Copeland where the Conservative majority increased to a still-respectable 5,842.
However, it is clear that the long-term divide emerging from this election is in fact a country-suburb-city divide, even though the majority of Conservative gains were in the north of England in former mining/industrial areas, with Conservative majorities of over 10,000 being secured in seats such as Mansfield and Walsall North, once rock-solid Labour seats. The Conservatives failed to gain any of the seats they lost to Labour in 2017 in either the South East or the South West, with the exception of Stroud. Portsmouth South and Reading East in particular showed surprising swings to Labour. Greater London also marked the only Labour gain from Conservative: Putney, one of the strongest pro-Remain seats in the country, although the Liberal Democrats accidentally split the Labour vote enough to ensure a Conservative gain of Kensington (the only seat they won from Labour in the whole of Greater London) by just 150 votes; ironically the Liberal Democrat candidate in Kensington was former Conservative MP Sam Gyimah. In England and Wales, only two Conservative MPs-Anne Main and Zac Goldsmith-lost their seats, both to the Liberal Democrats; St Albans and Richmond Park have highly qualified populations which clearly voted Remain (also, in St Albans, former Labour MP Kerry Pollard was not standing again). The liberal pro-Remain message also came relatively close to unseating two famous hardline Brexiteers, Sir John Redwood and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, although both held their seats in the end on much-reduced majorities. Former Work & Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith also held on in Chingford & Woodford Green despite a small swing to Labour.
Labour's hard left campaign backfired spectacularly, as did its indecision on Brexit. More importantly, its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was distrusted by many traditional Labour voters and was the most frequently cited reason for not voting Labour, especially in towns with a high Brexit vote. Almost everywhere, Labour's vote share fell, often by more than 10 percentage points, even where it was never in any position to win the seat. In addition to the longstanding Labour seats spectacularly lost to the Conservatives as many as 12 Labour candidates lost their deposits across Britain (five in England, seven in Scotland), the most since 1987 when the deposit retention threshold was lowered to 5% from 12.5%. Labour overall won only 203 seats, 6 fewer than its infamous drubbing of 1983, although this year they won only one seat in Scotland compared to the 44 seats Labour won in Scotland in 1983, and furthermore successive boundary changes have reduced the number of Labour seats overall as metropolitan seats have seen the most mergers or fragmentations in boundary reviews. A Liberal Democrat squeeze in Cheltenham, Esher & Walton, Westmorland & Lonsdale and Winchester respectively was responsible for four lost Labour deposits in England; in Scotland the SNP squeezed the Labour vote heavily in rural areas (as did the Liberal Democrats in North East Fife; more on this later in my analysis),and Independent candidate Claire Wright squeezed the Labour vote to a deposit losing level in East Devon. The largest swing from Labour to the Conservatives, 18.4% in Bassetlaw, is the highest such swing in history. In terms of Remain seats, there was also an unusually high 15.9% swing in Leicester East where the Conservative candidate, Bhupal Dave, was a Hindu but where the Labour candidate, Claudia Webbe (replacing Keith Vaz) was not, reminiscent of the then-deviant pro-Conservative swings in Bethnal Green & Bow and Bradford West in 1997. It is likely after this election that Labour will shift away from a Corbynite stance the way it shifted away from a hard left stance after Michael Foot's debacle of 1983. Another effect of this sea change is that Labour now have no seats at all in either Cumbria or Staffordshire, which contained many semi-rural Labour strongholds; their largest seat by geographical area is now Lancaster & Fleetwood (soon to disappear in a boundary review).
Coming up in part 2 of my analysis of the 2019 British general election-Green Party, Liberal Democrats and other assorted parties and independents.
The surprise exit poll proved to be almost entirely accurate-it predicted a Conservative majority of 86 and the final Conservative majority was 80, the biggest since 1987; they won 365 seats, just 11 fewer than in 1987, one of Margaret Thatcher's infamous treble-figure landslide victories (the other being 1983, of course). The Conservatives gained 47 seats overall; however, it was the type of seats they gained from Labour that stood out most of all. Their capture of Blyth Valley, a former mining seat which had been held by Labour since 1935, set the tone for the entire election, which saw them gain the following Labour strongholds that had been Labour-held since 1945 or even earlier (or would have been in terms of predecessor seats): Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield, North West Durham, Leigh, Heywood & Middleton, Stoke-on-Trent North (where I was the Green Party candidate), Stoke-on-Trent Central, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Don Valley, Rother Valley, Penistone & Stocksbridge, both West Bromwich seats, Wakefield, Workington, Great Grimsby, Ashfield, Bassetlaw, and most strikingly Bolsover, bringing an end to the 49 year long parliamentary career of the "Beast of Bolsover", Dennis Skinner. Burnley also fell to the Conservatives for the first time since 1910 and its former Liberal Democrat MP, Gordon Birtwhistle, polled as low as 9%. The normally Labour-friendly suburban conurbational marginal seats of Birmingham Northfield, Bolton North East, Dudley North, Wolverhampton North East, and both Bury seats also fell (by only 105 and 402 votes respectively in both Bury seats, though) as did several of Labour's surprise gains of 2017, such as Ipswich and Lincoln, traditionally known for being bellwether seats. Blackpool South, which in common with traditional seaside resorts had previously seen a long-term Conservative decline since Labour first won it in 1997, returned to the Conservative fold. The six seats the Conservatives gained from Labour in 2017 all saw their majorities increase by more than 10,000 in every case except Copeland where the Conservative majority increased to a still-respectable 5,842.
However, it is clear that the long-term divide emerging from this election is in fact a country-suburb-city divide, even though the majority of Conservative gains were in the north of England in former mining/industrial areas, with Conservative majorities of over 10,000 being secured in seats such as Mansfield and Walsall North, once rock-solid Labour seats. The Conservatives failed to gain any of the seats they lost to Labour in 2017 in either the South East or the South West, with the exception of Stroud. Portsmouth South and Reading East in particular showed surprising swings to Labour. Greater London also marked the only Labour gain from Conservative: Putney, one of the strongest pro-Remain seats in the country, although the Liberal Democrats accidentally split the Labour vote enough to ensure a Conservative gain of Kensington (the only seat they won from Labour in the whole of Greater London) by just 150 votes; ironically the Liberal Democrat candidate in Kensington was former Conservative MP Sam Gyimah. In England and Wales, only two Conservative MPs-Anne Main and Zac Goldsmith-lost their seats, both to the Liberal Democrats; St Albans and Richmond Park have highly qualified populations which clearly voted Remain (also, in St Albans, former Labour MP Kerry Pollard was not standing again). The liberal pro-Remain message also came relatively close to unseating two famous hardline Brexiteers, Sir John Redwood and Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, although both held their seats in the end on much-reduced majorities. Former Work & Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith also held on in Chingford & Woodford Green despite a small swing to Labour.
Labour's hard left campaign backfired spectacularly, as did its indecision on Brexit. More importantly, its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, was distrusted by many traditional Labour voters and was the most frequently cited reason for not voting Labour, especially in towns with a high Brexit vote. Almost everywhere, Labour's vote share fell, often by more than 10 percentage points, even where it was never in any position to win the seat. In addition to the longstanding Labour seats spectacularly lost to the Conservatives as many as 12 Labour candidates lost their deposits across Britain (five in England, seven in Scotland), the most since 1987 when the deposit retention threshold was lowered to 5% from 12.5%. Labour overall won only 203 seats, 6 fewer than its infamous drubbing of 1983, although this year they won only one seat in Scotland compared to the 44 seats Labour won in Scotland in 1983, and furthermore successive boundary changes have reduced the number of Labour seats overall as metropolitan seats have seen the most mergers or fragmentations in boundary reviews. A Liberal Democrat squeeze in Cheltenham, Esher & Walton, Westmorland & Lonsdale and Winchester respectively was responsible for four lost Labour deposits in England; in Scotland the SNP squeezed the Labour vote heavily in rural areas (as did the Liberal Democrats in North East Fife; more on this later in my analysis),and Independent candidate Claire Wright squeezed the Labour vote to a deposit losing level in East Devon. The largest swing from Labour to the Conservatives, 18.4% in Bassetlaw, is the highest such swing in history. In terms of Remain seats, there was also an unusually high 15.9% swing in Leicester East where the Conservative candidate, Bhupal Dave, was a Hindu but where the Labour candidate, Claudia Webbe (replacing Keith Vaz) was not, reminiscent of the then-deviant pro-Conservative swings in Bethnal Green & Bow and Bradford West in 1997. It is likely after this election that Labour will shift away from a Corbynite stance the way it shifted away from a hard left stance after Michael Foot's debacle of 1983. Another effect of this sea change is that Labour now have no seats at all in either Cumbria or Staffordshire, which contained many semi-rural Labour strongholds; their largest seat by geographical area is now Lancaster & Fleetwood (soon to disappear in a boundary review).
Coming up in part 2 of my analysis of the 2019 British general election-Green Party, Liberal Democrats and other assorted parties and independents.
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