UK’s Johnson has no one else to blame now

In 2019, Boris Johnson took power in Britain. In 2020, he took back control, leading his country out of the European Union. In the year to come, those voters who made it all possible will be expecting to see some of the benefits he promised. They will ultimately provide the thumbs up or down on Johnson’s big Brexit project and legacy.
Constituencies in England’s northern and Midlands regions — dubbed the Red Wall because of their former loyalty to the opposition Labour Party — did for Johnson in the December 2019 election what voters in places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan did for Donald Trump in 2016. One year on, those English voters are hurting. The north has suffered more Covid-19 deaths than the rest of the UK, and endured the pandemic’s devastating impact on education, mental health and employment.
These are the parliamentary seats that both the ruling Conservatives and Labour know are the key to future elections. “It is vital you make a donation today in order to protect our marginal Blue Wall MPs and our nation’s
reclaimed independence,” reads a new Conservative Party email to supporters. The Red Wall was repainted as the Blue Wall after it delivered 2019’s victory.
Johnson still has a higher approval rating than his three predecessors did at this stage of their premierships, but he can’t be complacent. In a November poll by JLPartners for Channel 4 News, the Conservatives had retreated significantly among Red Wall voters. In 2019, they led 48% to 39%, but Labour was ahead by 47% to 41% in the November survey. That, says pollster and former Downing street adviser James Johnson, would equate to the Tories losing 36 of the 45 “red” seats they nabbed in the election.
Some of this rebalancing is inevitable as 2019 provided perfect conditions for the Conservative leader. Two determining factors of his victory — support for Brexit and a dislike of former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn — became irrelevant in 2020. Keir Starmer replaced Corbyn and began steering the Labour Party away from his hard-left, unpatriotic agenda. And Johnson struck his Christmas Eve deal with the EU, getting Brexit done. But Covid-19 has made the political landscape more treacherous for the government. The third factor of the Tories’ 2019 success in the north — faith in Johnson himself – has taken a hit this year. While the prime minister gets points for his Brexit deal, most voters want to move on from that subject.
The pandemic has added to the urgency of Johnson’s big economic rebalancing agenda for England’s left-behind regions. Red Wall voters are predominately working class. Most live in towns rather than cities. For many, London is a foreign country and not a particularly appealing one. Income and productivity in these areas are lower than elsewhere in England, and so is life expectancy. A previous Tory government’s move to a catchall welfare system known as Universal Credit resulted in 48% of claimants from the Red Wall regions losing out.
However, to focus exclusively on material circumstances is to miss the importance of values, community and country to this group. Deborah Mattinson, director of BritainThinks and a former pollster for Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown, has written a timely book on why Red Wall voters went blue in 2019. Her examination of three constituencies paints a more complex picture than the usual stereotypes.
What comes across is enormous resilience, increasingly challenging circumstances and palpable anger. There is deep skepticism about politicians but high expectations. Johnson catered to these voters’ dislike of immigration and the EU’s open borders, and by making big promises. That won’t cut it anymore. Mattinson, who recently reinterviewed many of those she spoke with for her book, thinks they won’t abandon Johnson straightaway. “If you’ve taken a very big decision to shift from voting Labour, as you’ve done all your lives and your parents have done all their lives, then you are quite invested in your decision,” she told me.

—Bloomberg