If anyone is interested in looking into 'the Labour question' in more depth, I thoroughly recommend 'Broken Heartlands' by Sebastian Payne. Payne (an FT journalist by day) travels through ten red wall constituencies, interviewing people across the community in those ten constituencies, seeking to understand why people made the switch from red to blue. At times it almost felt like a Bill Bryson travel book with the politics thrown in on the side. I listened to it on Audible and each chapter (one of the ten constituencies) makes for a good 'episode' in podcast parlance.
His conclusion is that, naturally, multiple factors led to the 2019 result, including the unpopularity of Corbyn, the popularity of Boris, the clear vs unclear positions on Brexit. Payne goes beyond these shorter-term factors, however, and looks at the social and economic trends across the last two decades in these seats, including the changing nature of work, how public services have changed, and how communities come together in different ways. The chapter in Grimsby stands out as a particularly interesting read/listen, as did the trips to Sedgefield and Blyth.
As for winning next time, there is clearly some low hanging fruit for Labour - not having Corbyn as leader, Brexit being a much lesser issue by 2024, Boris losing at least some of his star power. Bigger challenges remain still. They need to develop a coherent position on how to revitalise towns to break back out beyond their support in cities. Lisa Nandy is a smart and decent MP who is leading their work on this and I'm interested to see what she comes up with.
