Conservative MPs in Red Wall seats have got the jitters, and so they should. Two polls at the weekend are causing the alarm. One puts Labour 16 per cent ahead in those key seats that Boris Johnson would need to retain to win the next general election. And a constituency poll shows there is a new threat to the Right of Johnson’s Conservative Party.
Some will argue that these are standard midterm problems and that a couple of polls mean little. But the data suggests that on the ground, something significant is happening which has, as yet, gone unnoticed in London. A revolt on the Right is brewing, and it poses a huge threat to the Prime Minister.
This has happened before. Exactly ten years ago, I campaigned in the Barnsley Central by-election as Ukip leader. This urban South Yorkshire seat is rock solid Labour territory. Ukip barely got a mention in the polls or in media coverage of the campaign.
On the stump, however, I became aware of a shift taking place. When the results were announced, Ukip came second with 12 per cent of the vote. The Tories trailed in third. Nine months earlier, at the 2010 election, Ukip had come fifth in that seat. That by-election marked the beginning of the insurgency that led to the EU referendum and the ousting of David Cameron from Downing Street.
The latest constituency poll by Focal Data puts Reform UK, led by Richard Tice, at 15 per cent in Barnsley Central. A similar pattern is being repeated across many of the Red Wall seats, with Reform UK in double digits elsewhere in those key seats. Support is being built without the party spending lots of money or devoting many resources to publicity. It is the attraction of Reform UK’s policies rather than any enthusiasm for Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party that is putting the Tories in such peril.
There now exists a very mobile electorate in Red Wall areas. A decade ago, I met lifelong Labour Party voters who were for the first time willing to switch their support to Ukip, believing we spoke their language on the key issues of EU membership, immigration and patriotic pride. At the 2019 European elections, they switched again in increasing numbers, choosing to back the Brexit Party. And they switched for a third time later that year when the general election was held, voting for the Conservative Party. Once the generational link with the Labour Party was broken, switching became easy.
People lent their vote to Johnson in 2019 to break the Brexit logjam and to take back control of our borders because the immigration issue still matters to them. Yet just two years on, the volume of illegal Channel crossings has enraged these voters. The North East now houses about five times as many asylum seekers as the South East, according to the Migration Observatory. The impact of this is plain for all to see. As the council house waiting list lengthens, there is a growing feeling that Johnson told voters what they wanted to hear about “taking back control” without really meaning it.
Such perceptions are electorally disastrous for any prime minister. Yet there is potentially an even bigger problem on the horizon. This year’s massively increased gas and electricity bills are going to cause an enormous shock. Worse still, these large bills will coincide with tax rises. If Richard Tice can get the message through that 25 per cent of people’s electricity bills is spent on green subsidies – and that the 5 per cent VAT energy rate has, despite promises, not been removed – then Reform UK will have its big chance.
The revolt on the Right ended the premierships of David Cameron and Theresa May. I founded Reform UK out of the Brexit Party, which had done its job successfully. For now, I am the party’s president in a non-executive role, but I intend to increase the help that I’m giving to Richard Tice. Brexit has not been completed properly. The net zero strategy is placing our nation at a significant disadvantage. And the Channel crossings are humiliating Britain.
I understand the disillusionment of Red Wall voters who thought Brexit would usher in a new politics. This has not happened. It’s just more of the same – a metropolitan Tory chumocracy totally detached from the rest of the country. If Johnson wakes up to this, he can still save himself. I suspect, however, that the revolt on the right will cause another prime ministerial casualty.
Listen to Nigel Farage on this subject on this week’s Chopper’s Politics, The Telegraph’s weekly political podcast, using the audio player at the top of this article or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite podcast app.
