A Conservative majority in the UK general election of December 12 2019, the largest since 1987, has hopefully put an end to the tedious Brexit debate for a long time to come, if not for ever. The Conservatives have won 365 seats out of a total of 650 in the House of Commons, having required only 326 to achieve a working majority. Most British people will, I think, breathe a sigh of relief at the prospect of focusing on the pressing domestic issues of the day. This definitive election result demonstrates yet again that political loyalties will inevitably change with changing circumstances, and that nothing can be taken for granted when it comes to chasing the popular vote.
One hopes that the election results will mark the beginnings of a gradual dismantling of the North-South divide in the UK, whereby significant swathes of the North of England, as well as North Wales, have become increasingly socially and economically disadvantaged since the de-industrialisation of the 1980s. These disparities are wide ranging and include demonstrable differences in educational performance, health status and life expectancy, employment prospects, disposable household incomes (a “wealth divide”), house prices, economic productivity and growth, government investment in infrastructure such as transport links, and in the provision of cultural facilities, among other things. Labour’s ‘red wall’ has been breached at many points in the Midlands and North of England, and things will never be the same again.
Workington Man, a particular brand of pro-Brexit working-class northerner, originating in the seven so-called ‘rugby league’ towns and named by pollsters after the former steel town of the same name in Cumbria, has spoken unambiguously. Traditional Labour-voting former steel towns, textile mill towns, mining communities, and fishing ports have spoken with one voice, rejecting long-held tribal loyalties to a Labour Party that has apparently become unresponsive to their particular concerns and priorities. Even Denis Skinner, the “beast of Bolsover” and a potential “Father of the House of Commons” has lost a seat he has held since 1970 in what was once solidly Labour territory.
The history of the North of England conjures up many memories of working- class lore, ranging from the Jarrow March of 1936 to, more recently, the miners’ strike of 1984-85. These are some of the more well-known examples of the northern working classes of the past standing up to their Tory and Liberal opponents of the day. Today’s election result would, indeed, have been unthinkable of in the mid-1980s, when images of miners fighting with the police in the Midlands and South Yorkshire dominated the news and led to a widespread rejection of Thatcherite Conservatism in what were then traditional Labour heartlands . So much has changed since then, as the priorities of the 21st century are demonstrably different from those of the past. Traditional sources of employment have dried up, and trade unionism has become less relevant in today’s workplace.
As we move into the 2020s, we await Boris Johnson’s version of “One Nation Conservatism”, and hope that the inequalities of the past can be undone in due course. While the much heralded “Northern Powerhouse” of an earlier Conservative government has yet to take off, there appears to be hope for the future. One hopes, in particular, that the new Cabinet will include many fresh faces from the newly Tory North,
Ashis Banerjee (weary of Brexit and thankful we can finally move on; lived in the North in the 1960s)