"One wall, Two wall, Red wall, Blue wall"
Suburban England is the bedrock of conservatism, not because they sign up to an ideology carrying that name but because their lifestyle, for all its brashness and swank, is essentially conservative
For the same reason that I believe city boosters are wrong, I also think a great deal of the ‘one wall, two wall, red wall, blue wall’ school of political analysis is wrong. When people from Centre for Cities or the London-based YIMBYs write about densification, agglomeration and spending billions on new public transport, they present a view that cities - the Great City of the West as I call it - are the only correct model for population distribution. We need to be more like the centre of Barcelona, Milan or Paris while failing to realise that the reasons for dense urbanism in Europe is a combination of land use policy and the ancient desire for security in a violent world. Those gorgeous cramped hill top wall towns exist because people wanted to be safe not because people wanted to be rich.
The consequence of betterment, and of being safe, is the suburb. Britain’s towns and cities are less densely populated than those of Italy and Germany because people felt safe and sought more space. At least up to the 1940s there was little or no barrier to the expansion of cities allowing affordable, high quality homes to be built and, just as importantly, for a specifically English culture of suburban life to evolve. In Britain, where the 19th century economic changes saw the collapse of the old agricultural economy, suburbs were about breathing space, family and a sort of bucolic myth that somehow a three-bed semi with a decent sized garden represented a return to the land. This suburban culture - so often sneered at by the urban cosmopolite and the city booster - is the dominant culture in England and, as a result, our politics stands and falls on how that suburban population sees its interests.
In his latest newsletter pollster Matt Singh talks about the ‘realignment’ in British politics that gave rise to the ‘Red Wall’ idea. Of course Singh and James Kanagasooriam who did the original number-crunching for the Red Wall idea didn’t present it in the simplistic media manner of traditional Labour voters switching to the Conservatives because that isn’t really true. Here’s Singh’s comment:
“Let’s be clear here – the realignment didn’t start in 2016. Starting after 1992*, many areas that eventually voted Remain started shifting left relative to the country, while areas that eventually voted Leave started relatively shifting right. There was a blip in 2005 after the Iraq war as Labour lost liberals to the Lib Dems, but otherwise it was a fairly smooth trend until Brexit put rocket boosters under it.”
To put it slightly simplistically, the North and Midlands became more suburban as the decline in old industries worked its way through the social and economic system of these places while previously suburban places tighter into city centres and especially in London, became more urban. This switch sat alongside the end of what Kanagasoorian called ‘Labour residuals’ in those Red Wall places. It wasn’t ex-miners who switched to voting Tory but the children of those ex-miners who switched. After the 2019 election I wrote about how the Red Wall didn’t fall because of Brexit, the Red Wall fell because suburbs are conservative.
“The collapse was predictable in local council elections and in demographic change going back a dozen years and more. This change continues as across the North and Midlands new housing development and new employment is more and more focused on these suburban places, especially ones close to the motorway network. This may be a frustration for fans of the outdated city model of the economy (as well as for NIMBY activists) but, as ever, the choices of people don't always match the preferences of planners”
Of course, because there is a Red Wall the commentariat has to have a Blue Wall. Matt Singh again:
“The traditionally blue parts of the South are traditionally blue because their demographics are blue. Again, though the realignment hurts the Conservatives in some such places, these are only even being talked about because the Tories are losing this election so badly.”
The problem isn’t any new realignment but instead that suburban England can’t see how the current Conservative Party is serving its interests. And, as a result they are tramping off to vote for other parties. But in the suburban south east this is unlikely to be Labour, even though its leader is a classic product of that suburban south east. In Surrey it is the Liberal Democrats, the party of the guilty rich NIMBY, that stands to win seats not Labour. The sheer disaster of the Conservative election campaign may yet change all of this but it doesn’t look like there’s a blue wall for the simple reason that suburbia hasn’t stopped being inherently conservative.
Questions of competence aside, the Conservative Party has set out a pitch based on the interests of the part of suburban England that has paid off its mortgage, likes higher interest rates because they get better return on cash savings, and thinks that their wealth is a result of hard work and sacrifice not the happy combination of bad policy, inflation and fortune. The rest of suburbia, as well as those who aspire to suburbia, are left looking at empty bank accounts, rising mortgages or rents and eye-watering energy bills.
It is now too late to recover but whatever rises from the ashes of the forthcoming disaster needs to start by walking out of the big cities and away from rural wealth because the future lies with asking Deano and Claire about their suburban lives, expectations and hopes. If the new phoenix of the right can’t get bogged down in either screeching about immigration or in pretentious debates around post-liberalism. Nor is that Matt Goodwin triangulation about leaning left on economic and right on social policy any damned good. Deano, Claire and all those other suburbanites want the assurance that they can stop fussing about politics or, to be true the economics of their life and to get back to watching football, having spa days and planning a banging ten days in Florida next summer.
The likes of Deano will buy a ‘leccy car if it looks good, is reliable and they can afford the payments. Such people will make changes to how they heat their homes but only if it makes economic sense. And they rather fancy one of those ebikes. Not to go to work on, but for a lark at the weekend. Suburban England should be the bedrock of conservatism, not because they sign up to an ideology carrying that name but because their lifestyle, for all its brashness and swank, is essentially conservative.
Up to a point. The things suburban voters want, sadly, depend on politics, and economics and even philosophies. High immigration adds pressure on housing and transport and there’s low growth, declining productivity and public services, high taxes, expensive trains. The suburban idyll becomes less attractive.