Red wall (British politics)

The red wall, also referred to as Labour heartlands and Labour's red wall, is a term used in British politics to describe a set of constituencies in the Midlands, Yorkshire, North East Wales and Northern England which historically tended to support the Labour Party. The term was coined in August 2019 by pollster James Kanagasooriam.
When viewed on a map of previous results, the block of seats held by the party resembled the shape of a wall, coloured red, which has traditionally been used to represent Labour. This effect is exaggerated when results are projected into a map showing equal-size constituencies: in 2017, continuous blocks of red spanned the longitudinal distance across the North of England. In the 2019 general election, many of these constituencies uncharacteristically supported the Conservative Party. Press coverage described the red wall as having "turned blue", "crumbled", "fallen", or having been "demolished".
Background.
Historically, constituencies in the North Midlands and Northern England tended to vote for the Labour Party. In 2014, political scientists Matthew Goodwin and Robert Ford documented the erosion by UKIP of the Labour-supporting working-class vote in their book, "Revolt on the Right".
At the 2017 general election, the Conservatives lost seats overall, but did gain six Labour-held seats in the Midlands and North, which the latter party had held for at least three decades: NE Derbyshire, Walsall North, Mansfield, Stoke-on-Trent South, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland and Copeland (held from the 2017 Copeland by-election). In 2019, the Conservatives increased their majority in the seats previously gained.
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has suggested prior support of many northern Labour voters for UKIP (which he had also led) and the Brexit Party made it easier for them to vote Conservative.
2019 general election results.
At the 2019 general election, the Conservative Party had a net gain of 48 seats in England. The Labour Party, however, had a net loss of 47 seats in England, losing approximately 20% of its 2017 general election support in "red wall" seats. All of these seats voted to leave the EU by substantial margins, and Brexit appears to have played a role in these seats changing hands.
Voters in seats such as Bolsover, and swing voters of the type thought to be typified by 'Workington man', cited Brexit and the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn as reasons why they chose not to vote Labour. The party lost so much support in the "red wall" in some seats, such as Sedgefield, Ashfield and Workington, that even without the Tory vote share increase, the Conservatives would still have gained those seats. Notable examples of "red wall" constituencies taken by the Conservatives include:
Post-2019.
At the 2021 Hartlepool by-election, the Conservatives won for the first time in decades in another red wall seat. The 2021 Batley and Spen by-election will also be for a red wall seat.
Use in other countries.
Journalist Nicholas Burgess Farrell has used the term to describe the Red belt, historically left-supporting regions of Italy, such as Emilia-Romagna which are under comparable pressure by Matteo Salvini and his right-wing populist Lega Nord party.
Criticism of the term.
The "red wall" metaphor has been criticised as a generalisation. Lewis Baston argues that the "red wall" is politically diverse, and includes bellwether seats which swung with the national trend, as well as former mining and industrial seats which show a more unusual shift. Rosie Lockwood, meanwhile, said the term was "[the latest attempt by] the Westminster establishment [...] to define the north through soundbites". In an article for "The Daily Telegraph" in 2020, Royston Smith, MP for Southampton Itchen, made the case that his seat in post-industrial Southampton was one of the first red wall seats gained from the Labour Party when he became its Conservative MP at the 2015 United Kingdom general election.
David Jeffrey, a lecturer in British Politics at the University of Liverpool, claimed that "the Conservative party's new supporters aren't really that different from their old ones". Using data from the British Election Study, he analysed the attitudes between voters within and outwith the "red wall" and found that "[t]he differences between Red Wall and non-Red Wall voters (and switchers) is marginal across all three topics, suggesting [that] 'going woke' isn't a unique threat to the party's new electoral coalition any more than it is to their voter base in general."
In May 2021, YouGov released the results of a large survey which "somewhat contradicts 'evidence' from vox-pops and commentary on the underlying reasons for voters moving away from Labour in these constituencies." According to Patrick English:
"Our survey shows that rather than being a bastion of social conservativism within Britain, these constituencies up and down the North and Midlands contain a great diversity of opinions, and indeed widespread support for a range of what we might consider progressive policies and views.
Furthermore, where Red Wall voters do exhibit socially conservative attitudes, they are not significant stronger (or no more common) than the level of social conservativism which we see among the British public in general.
In other words, the Red Wall is no more socially conservative than Britain as a whole, and characterisation of voters in these areas as predominantly “small c” conservatives concerned about social liberalisation or culture wars is not supported by polling evidence."
Responding to this survey, Jeremy Corbyn's former senior policy adviser, Andrew Fisher, insisted that the concept of the "mythologised" red wall was "part of a decades-long agenda aimed at undermining progressive causes."