Politically Homeless : What is next for red wall voters.

From the Buxton Battle of Ideas festival, 5th November 2022

Last Saturday I was given the privilege of speaking at The Battle of Ideas festival in Buxton. If you have never attended the event before, it comes highly recommended. It is a veritable plethora of speakers from different backgrounds on different subjects, and the best bit is that we are the smallest part of it, because the audience gets far more time than the speakers. It is thought provoking and inspirational, free speech is not only allowed it is practically mandatory! You should definitely give @acadofideas a follow on twitter, and make a date of the next festival.

Anyway, this was my contribution to the panel Politically Homeless : What’s next for Red Wall voters? Enjoy!

Over the last few weeks I have sat down a few times to decide what I want to say on this panel, only to tear it up and start again as the political landscape has yet another seismic shift. When the question put to the panel was “Have the Tories lost the red wall?” I’ve gone from “Rumworth By-Election 56% Swing - NO”, to when Hunt undid the mini budget “Yes – Next Question!” So thankfully the question got changed a little.

So what is next for Red Wall voters? Well first I think we should start with the reasons why voters feel “homeless” and in some cases even hopeless.

I have to say I really dislike the terms Red Wall and Blue Wall, it lumps voters into one big homogenous blob purely based on geographic location, and I feel does as much to disenfranchise participation in democracy as anything else. It says to people that unless you vote with “the blob” your vote doesn’t count!

That said, it can’t be denied that there are places you can pin a particular colour rosette on a Donkey and it will get elected and I think a large part of the politically homeless feeling comes from this disenfranchisement, where people feel their vote won’t count, so why bother?

I personally feel dismayed when we see turnouts of around 20% in elections, because it means that decisions are made by the majority of those who bother to turn out, rather than the majority.

I also think that First Past The Post voting has something to do with it also, because unless you have a 2 horse race, there are many occasions that the majority end up with a candidate they really didn’t want, simply because the majority have different ideas on who they want.

No electoral system is perfect, and I dislike the current Proportional Reprsentation models, because they either rely on lists or thresholds and I don’t think either are a good idea.

What I would like to see is a hybrid of First Past The Post and Single Transferable Vote. This, in my view, would be far fairer and incentivise more people to vote, because let’s face it, politics is rarely black and white, usually a whole bunch of shades of grey.

Losers consent has a big part to play in this too. Look at how many tried desperately to overturn the 2016 Brexit referendum vote!

How many times can people be told that they are too thick to understand what they are voting for, that they made the wrong decision, and, watch their vote try to be overturned before they lose faith in democracy?

If we politicians can’t respect democracy, how on earth do we expect the electorate to engage with it?

On the ground, while there are certainly people unhappy with the Conservatives right now, I don’t see any real enthusiasm for Labour either.

Sure there are die hard supporters on both sides, but most people are focused on the issues that really matter to them, pensions, cost of living, taxation and so on.

But beyond that, people also really care about the cultural issues that effect our society, like the current assault on womens rights, or even the right to debate such issues.

And let me tell you that any politician that can’t even define what a woman is, as far as I can tell, the feeling is that they have lost the plot completely.

People are starting to see through the games that are being played like identity politics and are looking for politicians who will stand up for their rights and freedoms.

So in terms of electoral success I think it is all still to play for, and the field is wide open to those who will stop telling people what they should think, and start listening to what they actually think.

What I hear on the door steps is that people want their government to focus on the problems at hand, not on simply winning the next election.

People want their taxes spending on efficient public services, not frittered away on vanity projects, bureaucracy, and political ideology.

They want benefits to go to people who need them, people who can’t work, not people who can’t be bothered to work.

They want fair wages for fair work, there is simply no justification for those at the top of the tree earning more on the first day of the year, than those at the bottom of the tree have by the last.

They want to be safe, and have criminals punished not turned into victims.

They want a Police force that deals with the crimes that affect them, not police “hurty words on Twitter”.

They want to be able to pay their energy bills, and put fuel in their cars, not be lectured to about how we all need to make sacrifices by people flying around in private jets.

They want their daughters sports and single sex spaces to be protected and respected, not sacrificed on the alter of woke ideology.

They want to help those in need from war torn countries, but absolutely reject that the majority of those crossing the channel on small boats illegally are anything other than economic migrants.

They want an end to hypocrisy and do as I say not as I do attitudes.

They want politicians to say what they mean AND mean what they say.

They want to be free to live their lives as they choose, not as some big government tells them to.

So yes it is all still to play for, but the biggest problem for all political parties is that it has gone beyond simply telling people what we will do, we have the problem now of convincing people that we will actually do it.