Sir John Curtice: How can Labour win again in the North-East?

CAN Labour ever rebuild the red wall in the North-East? That was the question addressed by the country’s leading pollster on a visit to the region.

In the election, Brexit swept away all the old political certainties and many traditional Labour seats – Bishop Auckland, Sedgefield, Darlington, Stockton South and even North West Durham.

But in the devastation of that December night, Sir John Curtice says there were two events happening.

“It is a two sided story,” he says. “It isn’t just about the collapse of the red wall. It is also about the advance of the blue tie, which is a legacy of the collapse of Ukip.”

Nearly all Ukip voters abandoned Nigel Farage’s party and backed Boris Johnson putting the Tories ahead.

Then comes the Labour story, of the party being squeezed at both ends: a quarter of Labour leavers who voted for Jeremy Corbyn in 2017 switched to the Tories in 2019, and at the other end, nine per cent of Labour remain voters jumped ship to the Lib Dems.

And so the Tories went even further ahead.

“Labour’s fundamental problem was a perception of competence,” says Sir John, who is the ultimate in television psephologists, his white wiry hair all over the place as he tries to make sense of the results as they come in. “Labour faced a difficult choice over Brexit – but the Tories had just as a difficult a choice and they did choose and they provided leadership.

“But Labour didn’t choose. They sat on the fence and ended up losing their leave voters. They were in trouble the minute the Lib Dems managed to get the remain vote and Labour were without a leader who could provide leadership and come out with a clear position.”

Brexit, says Sir John, is remarkable in cutting across party allegiances. Eighty-five per cent of people would vote as they did in the 2016 referendum, so they are wedded to their view on Brexit – but not to their party.

“We have a society where people are heavily committed to one side of the Brexit argument but relatively few of us have a strong commitment to a political party,” he says, speaking to The Northern Echo before addressing the North-East Chamber of Commerce.

Going hand-in-hand with this is a decline in Labour’s traditional base in the North-East.

“Much of the unionised heavy industry which helped create a Labour culture has gone and now we have a Conservative government with rhetoric portraying itself in a very different way to the 1970s or 1980s,” he says. “If it succeeds, it could challenge the Labour strength in the north of England – it could be a profound change.”

That profound change would happen if Brexit succeeds and the Government persuades the north it is genuine about it in a way Margaret Thatcher never did.

But there is danger here for Mr Johnson, says Sir John, looking north of the border where an earlier collapse of a Labour red wall was triggered by the cut-across issue of Scottish independence – an issue still a long way from being settled and so Labour is a long way from a comeback.

“If Brexit is delivered, it dies as an issue and if Labour gets its act together as the Government hits trouble, the leave voters could come back,” says Sir John. “Leave voters aren’t necessarily right-wing on domestic issues. There’s no evidence, for instance, that they disliked nationalisation of the railways.”

Even though Mr Johnson is currently powerful, he could have difficulty delivering a Brexit which appeals both to the fundamentalists in his own party, who see the EU as a block to global free trade, and to the borrowed voters of the North-East, who see the EU as having failed to improve their living standards amid global competition.

This conflict is already being seen with immigration policy. Tough controls are favoured by voters but not by businesses, or even the NHS.

“The Tory party has been presuming that its big business bosses would remain sufficiently loyal despite it pursuing a policy programme that will not very comfortable with Tories – remember, they’ve lost a third of their remain voters,” says Sir John.

“So Labour has to have someone running it who isn’t scaring big business witless in the way Corbyn did – for them at the last election it was a question of what’s worse, Brexit or Corbyn’s Labour Party?”

Their answer was, of course, Mr Johnson, but if Labour had had a Blair-like figure with a more centrist appeal that Mr Corbyn, might it have turned out differently?

So Mr Johnson’s pro-Brexit stance has brought short term gains for his party, but are they solid enough to build a blue wall upon?

“Among the Labour leave voters (who switched to the Tories) in places like Bishop Auckland there were not many 25-year-olds,” says Sir John. “There is a long term issue here for the Tories.

“Have they won over the Labour leave voters or just the older voters? Unless they actually within 10 years win back their young, middle aged, centre right remain voters they are stuffed because their electorate is extraordinarily old.

“They have tied themselves to a cause that might not be a majority cause and which could undermine them when they have to re-orientate back for a young audience – this, long term, is Labour’s best hope.”

But will one of Labour’s three current candidates for leadership be the one to create a youthful post-Brexit party?