Apologies for readers here, but I wrote something on Brexit and the results of the last UK election back in 2019, on another format, and did not want to lose these for posterity. So repost I them here. It still make for quite an interesting read, with hindsight now. I still see a Red Wall avalanche against the Tories in 2024.
Originally posted by me on the morning of December 13, 2019:
U.K. needs to change the acronym and entire development model with Brexit
The Tories are euphoric over their election win.
Much of the focus is on the breaking of the Red Wall in the north and portent there perhaps for the looming US elections with Rust Belt voters sharing much in common with those in Northern England.
But my prediction for 2024 is that most of these Red Wall seats will go back to Labour. Not sure I can be so optimistic therein for the Democrats.
I think these seats will go back to Labour as in the end these are Tribal Labour seats where the defining characteristic is poverty underdevelopment, and neglect. Unless there is a huge change in U.K. government policy with massive re-orientation to regional policy (actually having one) and development, and delivering inclusive growth, then nothing much will change. Remember here that Brexit will see the end of EU regional development funding, creating a void which must be filled by the government in Westminster. Meanwhile, Brexit, in the short term, risks a huge economic dislocation which could take down even some of the remaining successful industries in the North, and I would include Nissan in Sunderland therein - I would even extend the concern to the car industry in the Midlands. Recalling a conversation with a car industry executive a few weeks back who mentioned that the U.K. produces around 2 million petrol/Diesel engines at present but the focus now is on developing battery engines and why with Brexit would any of the now all foreign owned car producers in the U.K. put this technology and production in the UK? Answer is they won’t. And if the UK is to remain a powerhouse in the car engine field or auto industry in general the government will need to invest, and big time in new battery technology.
Suffice to say that Brexit could provide a second seismic shock to U.K. industry akin in many ways to the early Thatcher years which did so much to devastate the Red Wall economy in the early 1980s.
The key to the Tories holding Red Wall seats will be in their moving beyond Brexit and delivering economic hope and transformation for a whole swathe of the economy which was devastated first by the Thatcher years and then forgotten by successive governments with the fetish of globalisation. The Tories had no interest as they were not it’s natural constituency and the metropolitan Labour leadership took them for granted. After the Thatcher era, globalisation did the rest. Politicians in Westminster drank the Globalisation cool aid. They assumed that the U.K. could just hook up into the Globalised supply chain and trickle down economics would do the rest in spreading wealth and prosperity across the U.K. There was zero thought given to inclusive growth - little done to address structural problems outside the prosperous South East. There was little, or certainly not enough, investment in infrastructure, housing and education on areas such as the Red Wall. Maybe this was by design by successive Tory governments or incompetence by their Labour and coalition counterparts.
All this is very close to my heart as I hail from the Red Wall. I was born in Wakefield and grew up in Pontefract. Pontefract could be deemed the Citadel of the Red Wall, and while the seat (with Castleford and Normanton) failed to fall to the Tories it almost did - with the sitting MP, Yvette Cooper, seeing her majority slashed from tens of thousands as used to be the case, to a mere thousand odd. That is just incredible in my mind. This constituency was front line in the miner’s strike - I remember police vans and pickets of miners lining the streets on my way to school in the morning, soup kitchens for striking families, and the strong sense of community in the face of the Thatcherite onslaught. Pit closures - including eventually the Prince of Wales coal mine (I played for their cricket team), and then the Kellingley “superpit” just a few years back left nothing in its place. There is simply no industry left. Retail outlets have replaced the slag heaps - literally in the case of the Glashoughton colliery which is now the Escape ski centre. Unemployment is high - opportunities limited. Employment is limited to public service, retail or distribution. Resentment is high - and particularly against globalisation and immigration which is why the area voted overwhelmingly for Brexit and which explains the poor showing now of Labour in the region.
Anti immigration sentiment runs high - which is a little surprising as constituencies like Pontefract have actually seen little immigration. These are very white homogeneous communities - aside from the brave families running local Chinese or Indian takeaways, or health care professionals in Pontefract infirmary. There is not much multicultural exchange herein.
Maybe immigration from Eastern Europe was the breaking point. It reminds me of recent visits. Staying in a local hotel I was staggered that all the staff were from Bulgaria. No disrespect to the Bulgarians who got on their bikes and made the move and work their backsides off, and pay taxes. But how come locals cannot do these same low skilled jobs in a high unemployment area? Perhaps it’s the welfare culture but more likely it reflects a lack of investment in training and education to allow the unemployed youth in Pontefract and other Red Wall areas to compete.
Another tail of the failings of globalisation relates to the City itself. I remember my time running a team at a big U.K. bank where of the 20-odd professionals in my team ninety odd percent of the team were foreign born. These were professional jobs, but not rocket science. Surely the U.K. could produce enough local talent to fill these jobs. Maybe big banks or globalised business just don’t look hard enough and too easily reach out to take foreign hires off the shelf - rather than thinking of social cohesion domestically and doing more with apprenticeship or graduate schemes to train UK talent. But I now ask myself why in my 20-odd years in the City I have only ever come across one other person from the Red Wall working in my field. Surely that is a huge failure of the education system and structural reform more generally. Banks will say they have graduate training programmes but my experience is that they are either filled with rich kids from private schools or foreign candidates. What about inclusive growth? It suggests a failure of government but also of business which might have fancy community charity programmes and might talk about ESG but when it comes to it, has just gone for the easy option and milked the globalisation trend to the full.
And the result of these failings by government and big business is Brexit with now major challenges of social cohesion but also huge economic risks to the U.K.
It looks now like Brexit is a done deal, with no second referendum. It’s going to be a hugely challenging process just getting Brexit done. But if the end game is to be successful I think Johnson needs to think carefully of why the UK ended up going down the Brexit route. And I think the answers therein lie in the problems now evident in Red Wall communities. If he is going to retain these areas in 2024 he has to focus on delivering really inclusive growth and not just in the South East.
Boris Johnson not only has to deliver Brexit but Brexcess - a hugely successful Brexit which truly delivers inclusive growth across the U.K and not just in the South East. His announcement of a big investment programme for the Midlands and the North suggests he might just get it, but he needs to think back and beyond from Brexit to be successful.
"Globalisation cool aid" ? What do you mean? Tatcher did lot of things and still her government closed less coal and other mines than the Labour governments before that. What is next in your criticism, blaming on neo-liberalism or?