Maybe there's a real shift in English politics? And will the Conservatives spot it?

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The wholly admirable UK Polling Report presents some analysis of MORI’s 2009 polling figures and makes this observation:

“This pattern of swing, with voters in groups that traditionally support Labour swinging the most strongly toward the Conservatives, produces a truly startling pattern when we get to MORI’s breaks by type of seat. MORI have the Conservative lead in Lab-v-Con seats with a Labour majority of under 8.7% of 21 points. Depending on exactly what notional figures MORI used and how they treated three way marginals, that represents a swing of around about 12.5%. Looking at Lab-v-Con seats with majorities up to 13.9% the Conservative lead is still 21 points – suggesting an even bigger swing in those seats (somewhere around 14%).

If the Conservative swing is biggest in Lab-v-Con marginals it must be lower elsewhere. It isn’t in safe Labour seats, MORI suggest a swing of 13% there. Part of it is Lib Dem seats, where the swing from Labour to the Conservatives is less than 1% (the swing from LD to Con is 7.4%, but I suspect that under-represents how well the Lib Dems would actually do). Where the big swings in Labour seats are really balanced out seems to be in the Tory heartlands – in seats the Conservatives already hold MORI’s figures only suggest a swing from Labour of 5%.”

To paraphrase – the voters in upper middle class England are not swinging to the Conservatives but those in lower middle class and (dare I say it) working class England are switching to the Tories. Now Anthony Wells at UK Polling Report adds the caveat that:

"Previous elections have never shown differential swings of this degree, we simply don’t get swings of 5% in one type of seat and 14% in another.!"

…but it might, just might suggest a real shift in English politics (and Anthony suggests this too). A shift where ordinary, working class folk who work in the private sector, don’t earn a great deal and watch in bemusement as their public sector brethren suck up more and more cash – mostly to do things they don’t want to happen – where these people start voting Tory.

These are the people who were most damaging by the smoking ban, who are irritated by the endless nannying lectures on drinking, eating and, seemingly, everything else they enjoy. These are the people who are roundly cynical about global warming, who want to use cheap flights to warm places once or twice a year. These are the people who’ve seen labour rob their pensions, let them down on education and want to tax them to the hilt for the horrible crime of using their cars.

And let me close by saying this: if Anthony Wells analysis is right then David Cameron has his strategy wrong. Sucking up to middle-class Lib Dem voting public sector professional and labour-voting social workers by coming across all green simply isn’t delivering – in fact, if we carry on like this, we’ll just alienate those hard-working people who hate labour more than they love the Tories.

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