Thread by @lukecooper100

I haven't read the book Beckett refers to, but I think his well intentioned piece gets a few things wrong about the 'Red Wall'. Primarily it makes the mistake of confusing a small but electorally significant group of swing voters with an entire area

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

It's a common mistake but it's one that we should be aware of in the 'culture war' era. We shouldn't 'essentialize' the ex red wall communiites by confusing a group of electorally significant voters with what remains a complex and variegated whole.

At the most basic level, huge numbers of voters in the Red Wall backed Jeremy Corbyn's Labour in an election where he was presented as a terrorist supporting metropolitan liberal extremist. This means about 80 odd Tory seats needs swings of around 8 per cent to go Labour

What's more if Beckett is right, this isn't an argument for Labour defending what it has. It's an argument for losing many more seats. Esp if the Brexit Party doesn't mount a campaign next time, Labour could kiss goodbye to Hartlepool and many other seats it currently holds

In a forthcoming piece for Political Quarterly, @ChristabelCoops and I look at the 'values divide' across different categories of seats using the BES data from 2019. On average we found voters in the Red Wall to be only marginally more 'authoritarian' than elsewhere...

We shouldn't read too much into this. It just shows your 'average Briton' regardless of where they live is pretty socially conservative. No great finding. But it does underline how it's wrong to see 'red wall' seats as especially reactionary compared to the rest.

The ex-Red Wall areas have become swing seats where small movements of voters in either direction make a big difference. Johnson's problem with the voters he won is that while they agree with Brexit, they tend to be way more left wing than your average MP.

He needs to keep hold of these voters through an economic crisis - that's challenging. He then needs to make sure he doesn't lose any other voters to Labour in the course of that crisis. That's not going to be hugely easy.

The suggestion in this piece that whether or not Labour win back these seats is down wholly or at least primarily to 'what Labour says', is quite problematic. LP cd say absolutely nothing but it would still be the only viable opposition party for disgruntled voters in these seats

I've been reading the Ainsley book - I don't think it's as bad as some of the texts it cites. It should go further in its proposals to address regional inequality, but the idea of tailoring some of the communication around what terminology resonates with key voters seems sensible