The Tories may have captured ‘Workington Man’, but this is how they make sure the Red Wall turns blue
THE Red Wall has fallen and the Labour Party stands dazed and divided among the rubble.
Wakefield, Warrington, Keighley, Dewsbury and Barrow — rugby league towns brimming with working-class pride — are now represented by the Conservatives, carried by the swing voter that framed the election, Workington Man.
Like Worcester Woman in Tony Blair’s 1997 landslide, Workington Man was the key swing voter in last Thursday’s election.
This imagined voter is a typically white, male, older Leave voter who didn’t go to university and lives in a town in the North or Midlands.
Having identified Workington Man at the start of the campaign, we at Onward have forensically studied how they voted.
Under David Cameron, fewer than half supported the Conservatives. Last week, nearly eight in ten backed Boris Johnson. Just 11 per cent of Workington Men voted for Jeremy Corbyn, and nine in ten believed Boris would make a better Prime Minister.
In backing Boris and Brexit, these voters have made the Conservative Party far more representative of working Britain. More than a third of Conservative voters are now manual or skilled workers, and more than two thirds did not go to university.
Geographically, the Tories now hold three times as many seats in the North East as they did historically, as well as three quarters of constituencies in the West Midlands, up from just one in four in 1997. So much for the party of the South, the rich and the privileged.
But this new electoral coalition will demand a new kind of politics. The common ground of public opinion is now marginally to the left on the economy and right on culture.
RETRAINING REVOLUTION
By a ratio of two to one, voters want a society focused on giving people more security rather than freedom, and investment in public services rather than income tax cuts.
If Boris wants to keep Workington Man blue he must break free of the traditional conservative economic playbook of trickle-down growth and bring purpose back to towns in the North and Midlands.
It is telling that the walls of Workington train station are adorned with posters of the local British Steel factory that closed in 2006, after 129 years of continuous production. This is a town proud of its history.
The Conservatives must help Workington identify its economic future.
New infrastructure, including better roads, reliable trains and faster broadband, will help. But on their own they will not be enough. For towns such as these to flourish, they need skilled jobs, dynamic companies and lasting private-sector investment.
Margaret Thatcher bent over backwards to bring Nissan to Sunderland, revitalising the region and jump-starting a lagging national industry.
FRAYING PUBLIC REALM
Boris Johnson should do the same, using science, research & development and skills spending to tempt world-class companies in emerging sectors such as renewable energy and advanced manufacturing to cluster in his party’s new heartlands.
High-skill jobs need skilled workers to do them — making a retraining revolution essential.
More than a third of Workington Man voters have an apprenticeship and another third are educated to GCSE level. They are highly vulnerable to automation and globalisation.
The Conservative manifesto included £600million a year to retrain disadvantaged people, but Onward’s analysis suggests more than £1billion is needed each year to retrain Britain’s 8.5million low-skilled workers before automation hits.
The Tories must also reflect on the social fabric of the places it now represents.
In many regional towns, the high street is emptying, libraries, pubs and social clubs are closing and crime is a rising concern.
Places such as Wrexham, Blyth Valley and Bishop Auckland, all of which voted Conservative for the first time last week, are not in the lowest ranks of deprivation but they are united by a shared loss of belonging. The Conservatives need an answer to this fraying public realm.
There is a limit to how much Whitehall can ever repair a sense of community itself, so a good start would be putting people and places back in control.
The success of city mayors shows the value of local accountability for local services — as Boris Johnson, a former Mayor of London, knows well.
Every place should be able to take the local leadership that the capital enjoyed during his tenure.
Local groups should be given powers to take over shops, post offices and pubs when they close, with funding to match. More people should be encouraged to live and work near to where they grow up, rather than moving to the city to make their way.
For too long, social success has been defined by how far you move from your parents.
MOST READ IN OPINION
The realignment witnessed last week was profound, but it is not yet permanent.
More than a fifth of voters engaged in contract voting, lending their support to a party other than the one that represents their values — and contract voting was strongest in Leave seats and former Labour strongholds that fell to the Conservatives.
Workington Man lent his vote. To make him vote blue again, the Tories need to deliver.
- Will Tanner is director of the think tank Onward
- GOT a story? RING The Sun on 0207 782 4104 or WHATSAPP on 07423720250 or EMAIL [email protected]