Since the 2019 election there has been growing support for the idea that ‘homeowner vs private renter’ is the key dividing line in UK politics. Housing tenure, according to this thesis, is the most important determinant of voting behaviour, even more than class or values — so we need to give priority to housing status rather than income or education.
The rise of this view on the Left has coincided with the decline in support for the Labour Party among those traditionally considered ‘working class’, and an increase in their support for the Conservatives. But if we see housing tenure as the real indicator of class in modern Britain, then we can still claim that the working class has not abandoned Labour. All that was needed was to change its definition.
The first thing to say about this argument is that it’s a little too convenient. Only five years ago, the Labour Left was using ‘working class’ in the traditional sense and upholding the dichotomy between ‘university-educated middle-class professionals’ on the one hand and ‘working-class communities’ on the other. Indeed, this understanding of class, culture and political values held until as recently as the eve of the 2019 general election.
You don’t have to be a cynic to think that this new understanding of class would not be put forward if the traditional class alignment of the post-1945 period still held, and if young people and renters were as supportive of the Tories as they had been in 2015. Certainly, the old concept of ABC1-C2DE is inadequate, as argued by a range of academics. But disregarding the importance of class and insisting on the primacy of housing tenure is politically misguided and empirically unfounded.
Just look at the ten safest Labour seats in the country. Five of them are in Liverpool; two each in London and Birmingham; and one in Manchester. There is, in fairness, a clear disparity between the percentage of people who own their homes outright in these seats and the national average — only 19% on average in those ten constituencies, compared with 30.6% nationwide.
However, when we look at the percentage of homes with a mortgage, the average across the ten safest Labour seats is 25.6% — just over six points behind the UK as a whole. If you take out the three outliers of Liverpool Riverside, Birmingham Ladywood, and Tottenham, it is 29.3% — barely distinguishable from the UK average of 32.9%.
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SubscribeI remember there being a “increasing sense that Boris Johnson’s days are numbered” in 2019 (brother resigning, withdrawing whip from 28 MPs, prorogation ruling, extension letter to EU) and in 2020 (Dom Cummings road trip, Tiers, Christmas lockdown). Also earlier his year (curtain gate, DC revelations, NI rise, petrol shortages).
I see the Tories are back up in the polls today. Maybe this sense is only growing among the media class after all.
Withdrawing the whip was a masterstroke by eliminating a vocal and quite senior group of his critics who walked themselves into a trap. I suspect it was Cummings’ idea rather than Boris’s, but far from a sign of impending removal.
It was brutal, clever, and necessary. Two out of three of those point more to DC than Bojo.
Good and timely article!. Thanks to David Swift for backing up the argument with persuasive statistics. I recently looked up the statistics on rates of home ownership in different countries. Countries with the highest rate of home ownership include Cuba, China and Romania. Countries with the lowest rate of home ownership include Switzerland, Germany and Austria. When it comes to home ownership as a political aspiration, Fidel Castro was a much bigger fan than Margaret Thatcher.
You might have mentioned the non-fire-resistant cladding issue, especially affecting home-owners in London high-rises.. Large numbers of home-owners in London have bought property that is effectively worthless because of these building defects. A party prepared to solve that problem could pick up a lot of support. But that should not detract from your main argument!
“And if combined with another about-turn on cultural issues…a return to economic and cultural liberalism..”
Remember Boris’ remark that the red wall voters had only lent their votes to the Conservatives. If we do get such an about-turn don’t expect those voters to stick with the Tories. That is not to say that they will go back to Labour- they now have a taste for populism and there groups out there who will give it to them.
David Swift dismisses three of the ten seats (30%) that voted most heavily Labour as ‘outliers’. And yet the entire study is based on 10 seats out of the 203 Labour hold (5%) or out of the 326 seats (3%) that Labour would need to win to hold a majority – and yet these 10 seats are not considered to be outliers! If this is the way Labour is analysing voting trends in an age of computing and regression analysis software, then they have little chance.
The 2019 election turned on May promising to increase the proportion of a potential inheritance used to support care of the elderly, depriving many of their only chance of having a home without a debt that dwarfed their earning potential. Housing remains the key to Labour’s chance of winning the next election. Their policy should not be to back either house-ownership or renting. It has to be a policy that aims to reduce the cost of home ownership and renting.
We really need to get away from this never-ending Labour vs Tory scenario. Today, I think you would find that many Tory MPs think Labour and vice versa. Almost all of the socialist magazines are talking about PR because that seems to be the only route to victory. I am not a fan.
For sure, in a modern world we have to find a way of removing the House of Lords and we have to think seriously about our head of state. Do we really want an unelected king with strong opinions?
In answer to your final question, Yes.
I agree. If only to goad Parliament into action now and then.
I would need to see someone with a bit of common sense and intelligence before I became convinced that a “First Lady” type scenario was good for the country. Until then,give me the monarchy.