Just a little Saturday morning re-up for my long read from yesterday, on what the #Labour 'base' looks like, how we've done with it since 1983, and the phenomenon of the 'deprived bellwether': https://warringfictions.medium.com/against-their-interests-26b8968a1bc4 #HartlepoolByElection #KeirStarmer

GIST OF THE 1ST PART: For Labour to "recognise what its roots are...and meet people's needs" (to quote Corbyn) it must ditch false recollections, of heartlands taken for granted or abandoned by New Labour, and the idea that working-class is an automatic synonym for left-wing.

The chart below, for example, shows how many English seats Labour won, in each of the last 10 elections, that were above the median average for at least 4 of the following:

-Deprivation
-% C2DE
-Low pay
-Low house prices
-% Unemployed
-% Renting
-% in industrial jobs

This obviously isn't to suggest that a return to '90s Blairism is the answer. But it should give us pause for thought that during the post-industrial period (since 1979) the only leader to connect with Labour's working-class base was someone now regarded as a pariah by the left.

GIST OF THE 2ND PART: The Red Wall cannot be regarded in isolation. To understand the scale of the challenge we need to look at 'deprived bellwethers' – the list of poorer seats that steadily turned away from Labour from 2005, almost without us noticing.

This is the present makeup, in terms of voting behaviour, of seats above the median average for 4+ of the 7 metrics cited above. (11 extra newly created seats added hence the change in number). Beneath the surface, 169 of the 252 have swung away from Labour since the 2010 loss.

Below are the 'deprived bellwethers': ports, resorts, New Towns, poorer market towns, etc.

These are important to understand - maybe more so than the Red Wall - in that they 'should', socio-economically, be Labour, but have little historic, cultural attachment to either party.

We should now think about every single poorer seat like this - all 252. They are not beholden to Labour, we cannot assume we know what they want, and to win them we must earn it. If they vote for another party they do not do so 'against their interests'.

My tuppence-worth - and I may be wrong - is that policy gulfs aren’t as great as the liberal left fears. The ‘bitter pill’ really isn’t all that bitter…

(See the passage below).

But if Labour still aspires to represent poorer seats there must be a crystal clear purpose (a Beveridge report style calling) alongside really practical, no nonsense ways of talking about things. The posturing, gestures, jargon & general nonsense of the past decade has to end.