The 'red wall' didn't fall because of Brexit or Boris. It fell because suburbs are conservative.

New housing in the 'red wall'

Some few years ago I went to Rotherham, more specifically Rother Valley, to do what were called "ward walks" with some Conservative councillors. The Party, from a base of near zero, had got to ten councillors and I helped them with getting the Conservative group in place properly, with ensuring the Council recognised and supported the group. And I walked around Anston and Woodsetts ward (which today has no Conservative councillors). What struck me back then was the, at least superficial similarity, between this ward and the one I represented on Bradford council. But, that is, for one essential difference - in Bingley Rural approaching 60% of the electorate were voting Conservative whereas in the lovely rural part of the Rother Valley we'd be lucky if we scraped to 35%.

The difference lies in history - Anston and Woodsetts is a former mining community with everything politically that accompanies such places. And, as we walked round it over a decade ago, you could see the changes taking place. Not that the old pit village wasn't still central but that it was being developed - new housing, smart little semi-detached homes, little estates of those popular detached homes, and a sprinkling of new terraces and splendid big houses. And, while some of the people buying these houses were the sons and daughters of the miners from those now closed pits the town is now changed, as its conservation society observes:

Most residents work in the neighbouring towns such as Sheffield or Rotherham, making Anston a 'dormitory' town with few residents taking an interest in its history or working to maintain its identity. Those qualities that attracted people to settle in Anston in the first place are being destroyed.

Setting aside the idea of heritage lost beneath a tide of suburbanisation and the romanticising of coalmining, what's happening here is a reflection of what has happened across what's now called the "red wall" - places that, after generations of tribal Labour voting, suddenly switched to the Conservatives in 2019. The London media can't get enough of talking about "these places" (as one leading London-based columnist slightly dismissively called them) with reams of analysis, story and commentary littering the pages of newspapers and news websites.

The assumption is that the change came about because long time Labour voters in places like the Rother Valley switched to voting Conservative. As ever the process of political changes was presented as a binary contest with places like Anston assumed to be more-or-less unchanging. The votes are only leant to the Conservatives, say the pundits. Once Brexit is done, the Party can't assume they'll keep the votes. And yes, maybe this is true, just as it's also true that some older, Brexit-voting ex-miners switched to the Conservatives. But the real truth about the 'red wall' is a demographic one - these places have changed how they vote because the people living there have changed.

To appreciate how this gradual change works, we can look at an earlier 'red wall' - North Kent. In 1997 Labour won 8 of the 10 seats here - failing only in Canterbury and Faversham & Mid Kent, In 2019, Labour held just one seat, Canterbury. In Sittingborne & Sheppey, held by Labour up to 2010, Gordon Henderson's majority last December was 24,470 with approaching 70% of the vote. Just as in Rother Valley, some of this is about Labour voters switching over Brexit but most of it is a similar demographic change to that seen in Anston. Look along the Kent coast, at places like Ebbsfleet, and you see swathes of development - more of those tidy but ordinary suburban houses filled with people flung out by London's expensiveness, noisiness and crime.

Back in 2010 I suggested that several seats were worth watching - Rother Valley, Don Valley, Bassetlaw, Wakefield and North West Leicestershire. These are all, other than the Leicestershire seat (where Andrew Bridgen's majority is now over 20,000), 'red wall' seats. The change wasn't a sudden shift but a gradual one reflecting the suburbanising of semi-rural and rural places close to larger cities. Changes in the distribution of employment, people preferring a suburban to an urban lifestyle and the search for affordability all lead to this change. None of this suggests that these seats are all set to be Conservative forever but it is to say that, just as the reverse is true of London seats like Hornsey & Wood Green or Croydon North, demography is making them increasingly conservative inclined.

The collapse of the 'red wall' wasn't some sort of magic wrought by Boris Johnson, nor was it simply a result of Brexit. The collapse was predictable in local council elections and in demographic change going back a dozen years and more. This change continues as across the North and Midlands new housing development and new employment is more and more focused on these suburban places, especially ones close to the motorway network. This may be a frustration for fans of the outdated city model of the economy (as well as for NIMBY activists) but, as ever, the choices of people don't always match the preferences of planners. For much of its history, especially post-WWII, the Conservative Party has been a party of suburbia and the collapse of the 'red wall' came about in large part because the places in that wall changed from industrial village to dormitory town - they became suburbs. In thinking about policy, about 'levelling up', a Conservative government should keep this suburban truth at the front of its mind.

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