The UK’s very American political realignment

The speed and scale with which voters, mainly but not exclusively in the north of England, have switched their allegiance from traditional Labour to Conservative has been described as unprecedented. Professor Tony Travers of the LSE called it ‘amazing’ and spoke of ‘a massive shift of tectonic plates’. Nor can the results of last week’s elections be dismissed as a one-off.

The breaches in the so-called ‘Red Wall’ began well before the Conservative landslide in the 2019 General Election and what happened last Thursday is unlikely to be the end. Labour voters, it appears, were released from their life-long loyalty to the party by the Brexit referendum, and then transferred their votes to the party that, under Boris Johnson’s leadership, ‘delivered’ Brexit. Hostility to the politically correct agenda, that has lodged itself under the Labour umbrella, surely offered another reason to defect.

The next test will be whether Labour can hold on to Batley and Spen, following Tracy Brabin’s election as West Yorkshire mayor – but the writing would appear to be on that Red Wall too.