The Red Wall Falls

Editor’s Note: If Jack Merritt were still here, he would have voted for Labour.

The ideological project began when you weaponized those groups against your previous base, which was white and working class.

You earned this https://t.co/Kf9cvUX7zN

— MorgothLives (@LivesMorgoth) December 13, 2019

The Red Wall has fallen. #ukelection #brexit #boris #corbyn #exitpoll #jeremycorbyn #generalelection #election2019 pic.twitter.com/P77LH6umgl

— Spoofed (@spoofed_uk) December 13, 2019

In the aftermath of the 2016 election, the American Left convinced itself that Donald Trump had won because of a Russian conspiracy and because of fake news that was spread on social media. Similarly, the British Left convinced itself that the majority of the British people really didn’t want BREXIT. And yet it was clear to anyone who looked at the BREXIT vote in the north of England and the Obama-Trump voters in the Midwest that the true cause was the same.

Unherd:

“So there we have it. It turns out that the British working-class was not, in the end, willing to throw its weight behind a London-centric, youth-obsessed, middle-class party that preached the gospels of liberal cosmopolitanism and class war. Who’d have thought it?

Well, me for a start. And plenty of others who had been loyal to the party over many years and desperately wanted to see a Labour government, only to be dismissed as ‘reactionaries’ who held a ‘nostalgic’ view of the working-class. …

We sounded the alarm bells again earlier this year when, in the local and European elections, Labour haemorrhaged support in several working-class communities across the north and Midlands.

But the woke liberals and Toytown revolutionaries who now dominate the party didn’t listen to us. They truly thought that ‘one more heave’ would bring victory. They believed that constantly hammering on about economic inequality would be enough to get Labour over the line. In doing so, they made a major miscalculation: they failed to grasp that working-class voters desire something more than just economic security; they want cultural security too. “

The Guardian:

“This changes everything. The fourth national vote in four years has broken the parliamentary logjam with devastating effect. It was a rout. Labour’s vote in its traditional strongholds finally collapsed. The demographic, geographic and social ties that bound its coalition together have unravelled. We have yet to see if they can be put back together again. Britain has elected the most rightwing government for decades, handing the least principled leader in living memory such a massive majority that it could take a decade to get rid of him. Last night was bad. The worst is yet to come. …”

The Atlantic:

“Yesterday’s general election in the United Kingdom was a triumph for Brexit and Prime Minister Boris Johnson—and an unmitigated disaster for the Labour Party and its far-left leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

On paper, the conditions were ripe for a Labour victory. The Conservative Party has been in power for nine years. Johnson is controversial; according to most polls, his popularity ratings are significantly underwater. Although he promised to lead the country out of the European Union by October 31, alienating the half of the country that would like to remain in the EU, he failed to do so, disappointing the half of the country that wants to leave. …”

Vox:

“Historically, both British and European politics more broadly have been heavily determined by class divisions. Left-wing parties like Labour dominated among the industrial working class, while right-wing parties like the Tories did well among society’s upper crust.

But in the past several decades, this historical pattern became unglued. Educated urban professionals have drifted left and the working classes have tiled right, a shift that social scientists attribute to the rising importance of immigration and identity issues in European politics. In Britain, Brexit supercharged this long-running process, as highly educated city dwellers tended to oppose Brexit (making them more likely to vote Labour) while rural and less educated voters tended to support it (making them more likely to vote Conservative). …”

Unherd:

“This speaks to another question that will likely be raised by the 2019 election: is Labour still a party of the working class? Look at the latest polls and the answer is, clearly, no. Perhaps one of the most damning assessments of Corbynism is reflected in the fact that a Conservative Party led by an Eton and Oxford graduate now enjoys commanding leads in blue-collar Britain. Boris Johnson has grasped one of the new, unwritten laws in politics: that it is much easier for the Right to move Left on economics than it is for the Left to move Right on culture.

But he is also helped by a Labour project that often appears to be pushing away the very socially conservative and patriotic workers that it needs to endure. If there is another defeat, then, where does Labour go from here? If Corbynism is an ideological rather than an electoral project then when will the moderates leave the building? With the local associations sewn up and an instinctively pro-Corbyn membership it seems unlikely that a post-election civil war within Labour would leave the dwindling number of moderates in charge. Is it then finally time to accept the inevitable and depart en masse?”

NBC News:

“The 2016 Brexit referendum was when some traditional supporters of the left-wing Labour Party first considered switching, a process that’s matured in this election, experts say.

Industrial heartlands with long traditions of trade unionism and manual, low-skilled work — places most affected by Conservative cuts to public services — either abandoned Labour or seriously considered it, something unthinkable just a few years ago.

Many of those who voted Labour before 2016 were doing that largely on a legacy basis, without actually believing a lot of the values that today’s party upholds, said Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University, London.

Now the party is widely seen to be home to college graduates with socially liberal views, while the Conservatives have transformed themselves into a home for many with relatively less education and less of a global outlook. …”

Daily Mail:

“Boris Johnson stormed through Labour’s ‘red wall’ last night to consign Jeremy Corbyn’s party to a historic election defeat.    

The raft of seats in Wales, the Midlands and the North of England had been safe Labour strongholds for decades. 

But they came crumbling down last night as pro-Brexit voters backed the Tories. Sajid Javid proclaimed that the Conservatives are now the ‘party of the working class’. …”

Independent:

“Boris Johnson’s remarkable victory over Labour is also a victory for populism over policy. He has secured the mandate he wanted for his crude, misleading but effective slogan  – to “get Brexit done” by leaving the EU on 31 January.

Mr Johnson’s presidential campaign copied the man he was desperate to keep out of the election, Donald Trump. He got the Brexit election he wanted, and persuaded enough working class people to buy his brand of economic populism. “Unleash Britain’s potential,” the second leg of Mr Johnson’s slogan, echoed “make America great again”.

The US president won over blue-collar America in 2016, offering hope to the rustbelt areas left behind by globalisation. Mr Johnson has matched that by demolishing Labour’s “red wall” of seats stretching from North Wales to the northeast, with a huge expected Conservative majority of around 80 seats, the biggest since the Margaret Thatcher era. …”

BBC:

“Labour’s “red wall” across the Midlands and the north of England – the bedrock of the party’s support for generations – has crumbled as the Conservatives claim key marginal seats.

Leave-voting former mining towns like Workington, which was seen as representative of the voters parties needed to win over, backed the Tories.

Tony Blair’s former constituency of Sedgefield went blue.

As did West Bromwich East, vacated by former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson.

The Conservatives carved a path from Greater Manchester to Lincolnshire, Birmingham to Northumberland, as once Labour strongholds fell.

Redcar, a seat in the north-east of England that had never before voted in a Conservative, picked Jacob Young over Labour’s Anna Turley by 3,527 votes.

Some of these seats have not had a Tory MP in decades – and in the case of Burnley it had been more than a century. …”

Reuters:

“BURNLEY, England (Reuters) – Burnley is no longer a brick in Labour’s Red Wall.

Electing its first Conservative Member of Parliament for 109 years, the gritty northern England town is emblematic of the pro-Brexit shock in Labour heartlands which handed Boris Johnson a majority government on Friday.

David Hughes, 48, was won over by Johnson’s “Get Brexit done” mantra and backed the Conservatives after previously voting Labour.

“People wanted to get Brexit sorted and I think Boris will get it done,” he said. …

Its industrial past helped make it a Labour stronghold, but across central and northern England, formerly Labour’s Red Wall of safe seats, Brexit has shattered old party loyalties. “

Barack Obama was cancelled last month after he warned the Democrats about how the Woke Left was alienating moderate White working class voters.

Look at what happened in the UK. Center Left voters who don’t even like the Tories voted for them anyway because the Wine Track wing of the Labour Party was ascendant and had grown radically out of touch with the culture and needs of their devastated industrial towns and rural areas. Similarly, Trump ran up his margin all over the Deep North from Maine to Minnesota and carried those very same places in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.

The “far right” is the middle: socially conservative, economically populist voters. This never seems to break through and register in the mainstream. Maybe it will after this.

Note: The bigots didn’t want to watch Star Trek: Discovery or the last Ghostbusters movie either.