Red Wall, Red Mosaic.

As the next general election approaches, the so-called ‘Red Wall’ is under intense scrutiny, with its voting patterns set to reshape British politics once again. In this context, the Red Wall is used as a catch-all term to describe constituencies in the North of England, Midlands, and Wales, which have traditionally been seen as the Labour Party’s natural heartlands. Just five years after the Conservatives declared victory in ‘turning the Red Wall blue’, they are now lamenting their short-lived success as a lost opportunity, fearing the threat of Reform UK on their right flank and Labour’s revival on the left.

Tory pessimists are already starting to attribute their anticipated election loss to a failure to capture socially conservative elements of the Red Wall’s imagination. On current trends this looks likely to mean the Conservatives elect their new leader from the right of the party, Suella Braverman for instance. The subsequent rightward shift of the Overton window will set the stage for a collective inward turn, in which conservative figures blame the failure of our public services on ‘scroungers’ and immigrants. That the party lost not because it became too conservative, but not conservative enough. A turn away from the mainstream voter, not towards it.

But what if none of this is inevitable nor true? What if the Conservative Party are experiencing a serious bout of main character syndrome? Could it be possible that voters across the country, even in the so-called Red Wall, are genuinely supportive of a pragmatic and progressive government that will move us away from culture wars? Not so much the Tories losing the Red Wall as the Red Wall finding a progressive voice in this election. Nor even that these voters have changed, rather that they weren’t offered the politics they want to vote for in 2019.

Ditching the concept of the Red Wall from our political dialogue will better enable us to answer these questions and design our politics in a way which works for the people it is meant to serve. It is only by understanding the complexity and diverse needs of our regions, that parties can develop a broad church of electoral support based on real policy solutions. A Red Mosaic, not a Red Wall.

Red or Blue, partisan walls drive a reductive approach to political analysis.

It is understandable why commentators rely on political descriptors like the Red Wall. In analytical terms, it is helpful to apply labels to sift through data and construct a narrative. But significant analytical shortcomings emerge from this approach. Overreliance on geographical indicators allows us to ignore other key variables, such as urbanity, gender, age, and affluence.

Exemplifying this is Reform UK, whose success in the Red Wall is dominating both media headlines and the messaging of the party itself. This is not without reason, as Reform is undoubtedly experiencing success in Red Wall seats. However, the media coverage of Reform’s relationship with the Red Wall is skewed for a number of reasons.

The Red Wall does not have a unique relationship with Reform: The Red Wall Tracker by Redfield and Wilton Strategies shows that Reform has 14% support in the Red Wall. This is significant, but when the poll is scaled up to national voting intention, this is the same level of support experienced by the UK as a whole.

The Red Wall predominantly supports ‘progressive parties’: The same poll shows that Labour, the Liberal Democrats, and the Green Party garner a combined 59% of support in the Red Wall voter intention poll.

Gender is a much more reliable indicator of Reform support: In a 2023–24 poll, men supported Reform at a rate almost double that of women- 13% of men compared with 7% of women.

It is clear that our fixation on the Red Wall as a battleground for Reform is analytically flawed. Amongst others, a far more helpful framing of the drivers of right-wing support in UK regions exists in the left-behindedness index, which incorporates a comprehensive set of socio-economic indicators and leaves behind the lazy classification of partisan walls.

Terms like the Red Wall perpetuate the myth that change is impossible under first-past-the-post, limiting progressive politics and oversimplifying Britain’s diverse electorate.

In politics, language is important, and the continued emphasis on terms such as the Red Wall plays into the myth that meaningful change cannot be achieved within the first-past-the-post system. Britain’s voting system, and the two-party system it enables, gives the appearance of a straightforward ideological battle between left and right. But this is far from the reality, and disguises extensive fragmentation. In actual fact, sustained success in our voting system relies upon appealing to a broad coalition of voters. Far too often, parties fall into the trap of either narrowing the pool of voters they appeal to or defining their broad electoral coalition almost entirely in opposition to an incumbent government. The latter may ensure short-term electoral success but does not address the fact that left-behindedness will usually translate into anti-incumbent sentiment regardless of which party is in power.

Politicians use the Red Wall as a staging point for reactionary politics.

Since 2019, our politics has become far too comfortable with a reductive approach to identity issues, with right-wing figures promoting the idea that respecting diversity in our society is somehow the domain of a ‘liberal elite’. This is not a new phenomenon; right-wing populists across the world have employed similar tactics. In the British context, a particular feature of this has been the tendency of politicians to use the Red Wall as a means of advancing reactionary rhetoric. The likes of Lee Anderson exemplify this to a worrying degree, hiding behind the trope of the ‘every-man’ to test their most reactionary views. Anderson himself has become synonymous with the Red Wall, with the Telegraph labelling Anderson the ‘Red Wall Rottweiler’ and Jacob Rees Mogg claiming that he is the ‘Red Wall Personified’. This propelling of Anderson to the status of Red Wall ambassador represents everything wrong with our understanding of our regions. Whilst I am not Anderson’s biggest fan, such dehumanising language should have no place in our politics. Not least when Anderson is being used as a byword for swathes of voters across diverse parts of the UK.

The current discourse assumes the predominance of cultural issues, ignoring the real concerns of voters.

It is far too easy for those of us on the left to dismiss the appeal of Boris Johnson. His pledges of delivering Brexit whilst levelling up the nation, whether he cared to deliver them or not, resonated with the public in a way that few politicians had managed before. Since then, however, the Conservative Party appears to have latched onto culture wars as a diversion from their economic and wider shortcomings. The culture war policies currently dominating the discourse were conspicuously absent from the party’s 2019 manifesto. The Immigration Bill, the Conservative’s de facto Flagship Policy after Brexit, wasn’t even mentioned.

The fervour of the 2019 campaign, and subsequent lacklustre execution of Levelling Up, demonstrates the danger of using the ‘Red Wall’ as an electoral battleground, whilst failing to match promises with a long-term vision for growth. The electoral equivalent of love-bombing, it leaves those already feeling left behind by the establishment more likely to fall into the grip of populists claiming to be ‘of the people’.

Breaking free from the Red Wall myth, Britain needs forward-thinking politics uniting diverse concerns for a better future.

The concept of the Red Wall continues to pervade political discourse, shaping strategies and narratives. However, this framework oversimplifies the complexities of voter behaviour and regional dynamics, hindering meaningful progress. By transcending partisan walls and embracing a nuanced understanding of our electorate, we can pave the way for inclusive governance and genuine progress. It’s time to shift from the rigid notion of the Red Wall to recognising the dynamic Red Mosaic, where diversity and complexity guide us towards a more inclusive future.

The right future for British politics, one that reawakens the hope and aspirations of the public, is one that speaks not to one region, not to one segment of society, but one that speaks to each citizen. We need a vision for a better future, to do that we need our politicians to stop speaking to part of the electorate and start speaking to all of us.