A number of traditionally Labour-voting or ‘Anyone-but-Conservative’ constituencies went True Blue in the last general election in 2019, when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister.

The day after his party’s ‘stonking’ victory, as Tom Harwood put it, Johnson recognised that those Labour votes were ‘on loan’ and that the Conservatives would do their best in Government to look after those voters’ interests.

However, it did not turn out that way, and the term Red Wall is rarely mentioned as we are but one week away from the next general election on Thursday, July 4, 2024.

Where did it go wrong?

Immigration

As early as September 7, 2020, just as we were coming out for a short breather from the pandemic, The Conservative Woman posted ‘Red Wall voters reject Johnson’s immigration plans’ (purple emphases mine):

MUCH has been written about Boris Johnson’s capture of the ‘Red Wall’ vote in the last election. Most important is that this support was on loan, and could be withdrawn at any time. Tory loyalism is hard to find in these traditionally Labour-held seats, and voters are just as likely not to bother voting at all as they are to vote Conservative again.

As has been the case in most of our recent political engagements, a major factor is immigration. Should patriotic, social conservative voters come to suspect that the rhetoric touted by the ‘Conservatives’ at the end of 2019 was empty, the party will have trouble winning them back.

A Migration Watch UK press release today provides insight into which way support for the Tories in these electorally significant ‘Red Wall’ seats might be heading. Working with Deltapoll, the think tank has found that voters in these constituencies oppose three key elements of Tory proposals on work-based migration by at least two to one.

The government plans to ‘suspend’ its cap on the number of foreign workers entering Britain, a decision opposed by 55 per cent of Red Wallers. Indeed, 72 per cent believe there should be strict controls on immigration by non-UK workers, especially in light of the economy-killing lockdown.

‘This poll is a wake-up call for the government,’ says Alp Mehmet, chairman of Migration Watch UK. ‘They cannot ignore such a clear rejection of key parts of their immigration plans by a majority of Red Wall voters.’ 

How are the Tories likely to respond? Their handling of the illegal Channel crossings, characterised by tough rhetoric and soft action, leaves much to be desired, and suggests that Boris Johnson is unwilling to fulfil the promises he was elected on. It seems likely that, instead of taking a firm stance on immigration, and prioritising British workers for British jobs, the Prime Minister will continue to say what he thinks we want to hear, whilst acting in his usual liberal manner.

Polls such as this highlight the high demand for patriotic policy-making rather than meaningless words. The latter can keep Johnson’s conservative mask affixed for only so long …

However, that cap on the number of foreign workers entering Britain legally would not be the big immigration issue for Red Wall constituencies. Many of those places found that the Government, through third parties, seconded their best hotels to house Channel migrants coming over in small boats.

This report from The Telegraph‘s Steven Edginton in December 2022 shows voters’ disappointment with such arrangements in Crewe, beginning at the 4:36 mark. One Brexit voter told him that the borders seem more open than ever:

Better rail links

Another pipe dream was the promise of better rail links across the north of England, particularly between there and the Midlands.

Former Chancellor George Osborne promised these over a decade ago when he touted the ‘Northern Powerhouse’.

Boris Johnson promised ‘levelling up’, which included the same pipe dream.

However, the plan — High Speed 2 (HS2) — began with Labour in 2009. It was part of an EU plan to have high speed rail in every member country.

Fair enough. Unfortunately, in the ensuing years, the cost overruns were enormous.

On November 14, 2021, The Sunday Times reported that plans were already being overhauled:

Grant Shapps, the transport secretary, who is expected to announce the outcome of the Integrated Rail Plan on Thursday, is likely to face heavy criticism for the decision to drop the HS2 line east of the Pennines on the 120-mile stretch from Birmingham to Leeds.

But one Whitehall source said the reconfigured plans, with £96 billion of additional funds, will deliver many of the promised benefits without having to wait until the 2040s. “We’re looking at the same journey times as the original HS2 proposals but 10 years sooner. Lots of stations aren’t well connected to particular cities — we’re going to make sure stations are all properly connected to local transport networks.”

The cartoon accompanying the article says it all, with a railway employee telling a commuter:

It’ll halve the time it takes to get you to the replacement bus service.

We move now to Wikipedia’s article on HS2.

The Sunday Times article concerned the Integrated Rail Plan.

Overall:

The length of the new railway has been reduced substantially since it was first announced in 2013. It was originally to split into eastern and western branches north of Birmingham Interchange. The eastern branch would have connected to the Midland Main Line and East Coast Main Line south of York, with a branch to a terminus in Leeds, and the western branch would have had connections to the West Coast Main Line at Crewe and south of Wigan, and a branch to a terminus in Manchester. Between November 2021 and October 2023 the project was progressively cut until only the London to Handsacre and Birmingham section remained.

In 2019, the Government commissioned civil engineer Douglas Oakervee to independently review the project. The Department for Transport (DfT) published the Oakervee Review in February 2020:

Oakervee’s conclusions were that the original rationale for High Speed 2—to provide capacity and reliability on the rail network—was still valid, and that no “shovel-ready” interventions existed that could be deployed within the timeframe of the project. As a consequence, Oakervee recommended that the project go ahead as planned, subject to a series of further recommendations. After concluding that the project should proceed, the review recommended a further review of HS2 that would be undertaken by the Infrastructure and Projects Authority and would concentrate on reducing costs and over-specification.[21]

In July 2023, the Infrastructure and Projects Authority published its findings, giving:

Phases 1 and 2A project a “red” rating, meaning “Successful delivery of the project appears to be unachievable. There are major issues with project definition, schedule, budget, quality and/or benefits delivery, which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable. The project may need re-scoping and/or its overall viability reassessed.” Measures such as reducing the speed of trains and their frequency, and general cost-cutting predominately affecting Phase 2b, would be assessed.

This year:

The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee, in a January 2024 report, in relation to the revised planned route, stated that:

“HS2 now offers very poor value for money to the taxpayer, and the Department [for Transport] and HS2 Ltd do not yet know what it expects the final benefits of the programme to be”.[23]

This report was clarified to mean following the cancellation of Phase 2.[24]

Wales is also affected, as HS2 was billed as an ‘England and Wales’ project, yet, none of the lines was to run through the principality.

This has drawn criticism from all parties in the Welsh Senedd (as recently as this month, broadcast on BBC Parliament):

HS2’s classification as an England and Wales project has been heavily criticised by MPs[243] and Welsh Government ministers in Wales, arguing that HS2’s classification over Wales gives little benefit or any reasoning, as there is no dedicated high-speed or conventional infrastructure of HS2 planned in Wales, minimal HS2 services to the north of Wales, and a Department for Transport study detailing that, overall, HS2 is forecasted to have a “negative economic impact on Wales“, as well as on Bristol in England.

As rail infrastructure is not devolved to Wales, it means that devolved authorities are entitled to less of the Barnett Formula, when funding is increased to the devolved administrations in proportion to an increase in funding for England or, in this case, England and Wales. The Welsh Government has stated that it wants its “fair share” from HS2’s billions in funding, which the Welsh Government stated would be roughly £5 billion.[244] By February 2020, the Welsh government received £755 million in HS2-linked funding, with the UK Government stating it was “investing record amounts in Wales’ railway infrastructure” and that the Welsh government has actually received a “significant uplift” in Barnett-based funding due to the UK Government’s increased funding of HS2.[245] Simon Hart, Secretary of State for Wales, stated that Network Rail would invest £1.5 billion in Wales’ railways between 2019 and 2024.[89]

Currently, trains between north Wales and London take roughly three hours and forty-five minutes, with HS2 set to decrease the travel time between Crewe and London by thirty minutes. However, with no confirmed services directly between Euston and north Wales, passengers could be required to change at Crewe, and use the North Wales Main Line between Crewe and Holyhead, where any improvements have failed to receive funding.[89]

Red Wall: early adopters of Liz Truss

Just days after the announcement about the revised Integrated Rail Plan, an unrelated development occurred.

On November 27, 2021, the Mail reported, ‘Red Wall Tories set up WhatsApp group called “Liz for Leader”‘:

Tory MPs have set up a phone messaging group to carry out secret plotting to install Foreign Secretary Liz Truss as party leader.

Members of the WhatsApp group – which is called ‘Liz for Leader’ and dominated by new MPs from the Red Wall seats formerly held by Labour – have been exhorting colleagues to rebel against Boris Johnson on issues such as the Government’s social care reforms and the Prime Minister’s doomed decision to defend Owen Paterson over sleaze allegations.

Mr Johnson’s recent political difficulties have seen his approval ratings tumble – while Ms Truss remains the darling of Tory Party members, who will be instrumental in electing the next leader.

A source said: ‘The 2019 intake, particularly the Red Wallers, are disenchanted with Boris, especially over migrants and high taxes.

‘They don’t think he has a Right-wing bone in his body and believe Liz would be more faithful to traditional Conservative values.’

It comes after Ms Truss removed a key aide over claims that he had been ‘aggressively’ agitating for her to succeed Mr Johnson by sounding out colleagues about her chances.

By early 2022, Boris was quickly losing his grip on the Red Wall. At that point, Partygate was in full flow, having started in December 2021. The Conservatives’ polling was beginning to suffer.

On February 27 that year, The Times reported:

They would … surrender 55 of the 65 “red wall” constituencies in the north that contributed to Johnson’s landslide win in 2019. Blyth Valley, Redcar, Sedgefield, North West Durham, Bassetlaw, Great Grimsby and Ashfield would swing to Labour. Of the 107 Conservative MPs elected for the first time nationwide in 2019, 70 would lose their seats.

The JL Partners poll of 4,500 people and the seat projection was conducted by James Johnson, Theresa May’s former pollster. It put Labour on 45 per cent of the vote, 13 points ahead of the Conservatives on 32 per cent, with the Lib Dems on 11 per cent — enough to win 16 seats, five more than last time.

Red Wall constituents also saw that Boris’s levelling up plans, more about which below, were not working. On May 31, The Telegraph reported:

Boris Johnson has been accused of failing in his “defining mission” to level up Britain after official data showed a growing economic gulf between London and much of the Red Wall. 

GDP in the capital surged by 2.3pc in the third quarter of 2021, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS), driving overall UK output higher despite a 1.2pc slump in the North East.

Regional data published by the stats body also showed GDP falling in the West Midlands, East Midlands and East of England – all areas the Prime Minister has pledged to “level up” as part of his efforts to address regional inequality.

Andy Preston, the independent mayor of Middlesbrough, said the figures suggested that Mr Johnson’s plans for growth outside the capital were just empty rhetoric.

He said: “Nobody seems to be able to explain what it is that’s going to happen. What levelling up should mean is that people and communities and places realise that potential.

“What we’ve got clearly, and these stats bear it out, is the scale of the challenge requires a lot more than slogans and little bits of money. It really requires a concerted, focused effort in the medium term.”

Later that summer, Conservative Party members elected Liz Truss as Party leader over Rishi Sunak. Unfortunately, she became our shortest-serving Prime Minister. Now there was a story.

Rishi was elected Party leader solely by MPs in an effort to expedite matters. He never connected with the Red Wall, nor did he wish to do so.

Levelling up

On September 4, 2022, The Sunday Times reported on how levelling up was — and was not — working in Stoke-on-Trent, home to the historic Potteries:

“Levelling up — what’s that?” asks Anne Beckett, pausing for an ice cream outside the Potteries shopping centre in Stoke-on-Trent.

Her answer is actually a few hundred metres away, where a disused bus station is slowly being converted into a £20 million, 3,600-seat music arena. Yet Beckett, 76, a former teacher — enjoying the sun with her sister Linda, 73 – has never heard of it.

The sisters, lifelong Labour voters, switched to the Tories for the first time in 2019. Even if they cannot name Boris Johnson’s flagship policy, they voted blue out of a sense that Stoke-on-Trent had been “left behind” by a succession of Labour MPs.

Stoke, local Tories like to say, is the “litmus test” for the Johnson project. It won £56 million from the first round of levelling-up funding, more than any other local authority; Birmingham, a city four times as large, received £4 million less.

That is because all of the 2019 Stoke MPs were Red Wall MPs:

Its three Conservative MPs have been bullish in lobbying for grants in Westminster, earning them the nickname “Stoke mafia” among ministers. Critics scream this is “pork-barrel” politics in action. “We work bloody hard,” retorts Jo Gideon, MP for Stoke-on-Trent Central. “The role of all MPs is to make the case for your area.”

Continuing on to the Truss-Sunak leadership contest:

The charm offensive continues: the whole cabinet came here in May, followed by the Tory leadership hustings in July, during which Liz Truss name-dropped local confectioner Walker’s Toffee. But both candidates have been largely silent on “levelling up”. Some ministers have whispered that the slogan may be axed. As its architect leaves office, does levelling up have a future — and can the red wall Tories survive without it?

Levelling up crept into the party’s 2019 manifesto, a loosely defined pledge to use “Brexit freedoms” to build prosperity and strengthen every part of the country. Polling by More in Common, a think tank, found that 57 per cent of 2019 Tory voters thought the government was initially committed to it.

Yet it took more than two years for the government to spell out exactly what that policy might mean. Now, the numbers who believe in the government’s levelling-up commitment have plunged to 32 per cent.

Stoke remains a city in limbo between the riches of its past and its promised future. In the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, the Staffordshire Hoard — the largest collection of Anglo-Saxon gold and silver metalwork found — hints of the kingdom of Mercia’s former glories.

Another Stoke resident, Roy Greaves, 89, told The Sunday Times:

“I’d knock down most of it! Look at it,” he says, sitting on a bench in Hanley, the city centre. “Nearly half of the shops are empty, the rest aren’t doing proper business. They can’t bring any new investment in as there’s nobody around who buys anything. People just come in to have a bite to eat, then go home and watch television.”

Even though Stoke-on-Trent is in the West Midlands, a productive part of England, the prospects of its residents are unenviable:

The average person in Britain gets nearly 63 years of “healthy” life; in Stoke it is 55. Children here fall behind before they even reach secondary school, with some of the lowest primary literacy and maths performances in the country. By GCSEs, children are still performing well below average.

Disposable household income is £15,455, 28 per cent below the national average of £21,433. Twenty-four people a day die of smoking-related illnesses in the city.

As with other Red Wall constituencies, Stokies, as they refer to themselves, voted overwhelmingly for Brexit, particularly in Gideon’s constituency of Stoke-on-Trent Central:

In 2016, 69.4 per cent of her city voted to leave the EU, earning it the media accolade of Britain’s Brexit capital. A desire to deliver levelling up is tied up in that vote, Gideon says. “There was a sense that we hadn’t taken back control for a very long time because nothing had happened here.” After what she calls “decades of neglect” by her Labour predecessors, it will cost “billions and billions” to solve — but there “needs to be a sense of starting to sort things out”.

As with all regeneration projects, particularly urban ones, immediate progress is not always visible or viable:

In Stoke, aside from a few cranes, change in the town is hard to spot. A total of £31.7 million is being spent on transforming bus services — but that funding, Gideon says, will not arrive until the spring. Meanwhile, the bus company has been cancelling services. Up to 500 Home Office jobs will move here too, but not until the mid-2020s.

Most of the £56 million levelling-up fund will be spent on vast capital projects, regenerating the city’s industrial factories and warehouses. As well as Etruscan Square in Hanley — the largest city centre development in the West Midlands, which will include the indoor arena — the council wants to develop an old goods yard into a “micro neighbourhood” of flats.

These developments will undoubtedly bring in people and investment, but they are not stirring the hearts of the residents. “I’d put in a few more coffee bars instead,” says lorry driver Clive Hallmark, pointing at the empty shops. “Give people places to meet rather than just hanging around” …

Another crucial factor is opportunity. To David Harrop, 33, levelling up is “just something to satisfy the general discourse”. Harrop, a warehouse worker and aspiring author, didn’t vote in 2019, but might consider it if someone tried to transform the local workforce. “I’d like a real concerted effort to introduce some training and allow people to diversify. You have to be so adaptable in this labour market,” he said.

Harrop says most of the jobs available are still in distribution — a far cry, he says, from the proud industrial roles of the past.

The article concludes, asking:

Will a new music venue and some flats be enough to win again?

What of Labour’s chances?

The media have covered very little of the Red Wall constituencies this year.

Polls show Labour leading the Conservatives, but how many Red Wall voters have given their opinion on him?

A poll from July 27, 2023, shows that they disliked Keir Starmer. Guido Fawkes had the story (red emphases and italics his):

Keir Starmer has achieved net zero before even entering government. According to Redfield & Wilton, the Labour leader now has a net approval rating of 0% in the Red Wall, the lowest level since September last year…

Approve: 34% (-1)
Disapprove: 34% (+4)
Net: 0% (-5)

However, Labour was no longer at net zero some months later.

On January 12, 2024, Guido told us that two of Shaun Bailey’s local West Bromwich West councillors in Sandwell loathed him so much, they moved from the Conservative Party to Labour. However, Bailey believed that Sandwell council was poorly governed:

West Bromwich West MP Shaun Bailey … launched a petition last October to abolish his local council of Sandwell thanks to its poor governance. It looks like the councillors got the message…

LATEST SEAT PREDICTION: WEST BROMWICH WEST

LAB GAIN FROM CON @Shaun4WBW
MAJ: 17.5%

[UKPR Default] https://t.co/8OBLY2dXS4 pic.twitter.com/2x0CAKOoIt

— UK Polling Report (@PollingReportUK) November 11, 2023

Bailey’s not too popular with Tory councillors in the area. Guido hears two, both of whom happen to be chairman and deputy chairman of the local Conservative association, are defecting to Labour thanks to their hatred for Bailey. Councillors David Bilkes and Archer Williams are also taking the best wards with them as they go. Guido’s not sure that’s quite the look Bailey will want to go for heading into an election year – he holds Betty Boothroyd’s old seat with a majority of only 3,799. Especially as much of election campaign funding comes from the association…

On March 21, Guido reported that Bailey’s constituency office was boarded up:

If the wall is crumbling, there will be signs. West Bromwich MP Shaun Bailey has boarded up his office and upped sticks. A week after locals and association members began to notice the now-bare office on Whitehall Road in Great Bridge, Bailey published a video saying he was “moving”, though no one knows where to. That would have made sense last year, not 6 months from an election…

Guido hears from friends that Bailey knows he’s not going to win and is preparing, along with many other Tory MPs, for life after. He’s already working on getting a law degree. Boarding up won’t lead to much love lost with local Tories – the chairman and deputy of his local Conservative association defected to Labour in January…

UPDATE: Guido is informed the “grand opening” of Shaun’s new office is coming imminently.

Hmm. I wonder.

Today, I clicked on the video link which is Bailey’s Facebook page. It says (bold in the original):

This content isn’t available at the moment

When this happens, it’s usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people or changed who can see it, or it’s been deleted.

Not a good look for an MP running for re-election.

Oddly, Labour championed levelling up on March 28. I remember several debates in which Labour MPs chided the Conservatives because no one in the Red Wall constituencies knew what the term meant.

Guido told us about the Party’s volte face:

An op-ed popped up in The Times this morning by Angela Rayner and Keir Starmer praising Boris Johnson no less – and endorsing his flagship policy of levelling up. It’s certainly a change of tune. Rayner previously slammed Boris as a ‘pound shop Trump’ while Starmer said he ‘loathed’ the former Tory leader…

Labour’s top team write:

The Tories started to understand this with the levelling-up white paper. Much of the analysis in it was good. And there were parts that talked a good game about how Britain needed to build up all parts of the country. But the policy was killed at birth by the then chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who refused to back it…

It’s an accusation that Johnson himself has made against Sunak, who repeatedly blocked spending plans for the north of England, and who was caught on camera at a Tory event boasting that he had “undone” plans which “shoved all the funding into deprived urban areas”. It looks like Labour’s blueprint to regain the red wall will be a copy and paste job of the 2019 Tory plan…

Goodness knows if this is still a Labour talking point. As I say, no one in the media is covering the Red Wall, not even Guido to any meaningful extent.

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We’ll find out on Friday, July 5, how well 2019 voters stayed with the Conservatives or reverted to Labour — or even turned to Reform.

Red Wall: we hardly knew ye. RIP 2024.