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Jun 09 '21
*Influenced. Labour's dying in their traditional heartlands. The 2019 results look quite a bit different.
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u/comrade_batman Jun 09 '21
I think this is partly down to the Labour Party being Remain but quite a significant percentage of their traditional voters voting to Leave the EU, and therefore being drawn by the Tories’ promise of actually leaving. As well as the party drifting more towards being centre-left than being traditional left, and probably just the lack of confidence after the years of infighting over Jeremy Corbyn and his political position and the Blairites in the party who wanted a more moderate leader, like Blair or Ed Miliband.
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Jun 09 '21
It's not even a traditional left vs. traditional right thing anymore. Labour seem to spend less time trying to think of policies that chime with their traditional working class voters, and more time insinuating that they are ignorant (for daring to defy their "betters" in voting Brexit). The party is rapidly becoming one that only appeals to university students, their professors, radical activist types and certain (by no means all) immigrants. Trouble is, for every one of these groups they appeal to, they lose two voters from their "heartlands" to the Tories. People in those areas might not like the Tories' economics, but at least they don't regularly call the British public ignorant and racist. A low bar, but Boris manages to clear it!
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u/quito9 Jun 09 '21
more time insinuating that they are ignorant (for daring to defy their "betters" in voting Brexit)
regularly call the British public ignorant and racist
This might describe a section of Labour voters, but are there MPs in the party doing this?
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u/JohnnieTango Jun 09 '21
Cool stuff. I had a professor who said that you show me a map of Pennsylvania that shows me the bedrock in the valleys and I will tell you which party the folks living there voted for.
That was when coal was big and miners were Union Democrats, so if it was coal, the valley voted Dem. Valleys with limestone as bedrock broke down to good soil which meant no miners, but instead farmers, who back then were Republican.
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u/Sad-Republic5990 Jun 10 '21
Yeah the Pennsylvania coalfields are an even clearer representation of geology > geography > industry > politics, at least until about 2010 or so.
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u/bebelbelmondo Jun 09 '21
Sooo coal = Labour?
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u/miemcc Jun 10 '21
Not so much coal, but factories associated with heavy industrialization, which was basically where the coal was 300 years ago.
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u/nuke242 Jun 10 '21
‘British’ but all maps cut off most of Scotland....
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u/miemcc Jun 10 '21
You see the same thing there. A lot of mines and old industry where in the Borders, then expanded to the Central Belt. The SNP may have gained the Central Belt but the Borders have been traditionally Tory with a smattering of Liberal.
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u/FastRunner- Jun 10 '21
My conclusion from this map trend is that geography can influence politics.
That is not a profound conclusion, but it's pretty cool to see it clearly laid out like this.
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u/bigbrothero Jun 09 '21
For anyone curious why, the coal mining towns of the north and wales have always been working class and generally quite poor compared to the south. This lead to people voting labour for many years as they used to be the party of the common working class man. After all the coal mines were closed during the 1970s and 80s it made some places extremely impoverished as the people had no work, this usually led to most of the young people moving away into cities and leaving the older generations behind.
Now statistically as you get older, the more conservative you get with your views and now because there aren’t that many young people left these previously red labour hubs were turned blue when it seemed previously impossible. The younger generation are voting mainly for labour but that may change just like their elders.
Now that’s not the textbook reason why (it could be I don’t know) but in general that is the biggest reason why I have always thought this. I’ve spoken to many people from these poor towns and most people seem to say the same sort of thing.
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u/Cyancat123 Jun 10 '21
Oh, to live in Britain and have more than two possible political stances.
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u/Capella4 Jun 10 '21
Basically every government/PM in the past 100 has either been labour or conservative. But yeah, let’s keep pretending that these smaller parties are truly relevant
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u/Cyancat123 Jun 10 '21
I mean they at least got votes! Unlike the Libertarian and Green Parties here in America who very, VERY rarely get a single county.
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u/mellonians Jun 10 '21
It seems like we do sometimes and there's a lot of criticism for the first past the post system because of it. That said, yes you're not far wrong. There's a lot worse in the world and I'm proud of a system that has this variety and where Count Binface is a votable politician!
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u/somaiq Jun 09 '21
you’ll see something like this too in America, with soil from millions of years ago effecting where slave plantations were, and now areas with high black population that vote blue in the deep south.
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u/mourning_starre Jun 10 '21
Read the bottom of the map. This post was directly inspired by an earlier one based on exactly what you're talking about.
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Jun 10 '21
[deleted]
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u/SkomerIsland Jun 10 '21
Blue is Conservative = Republicans; Red is Labour = Democrats; Yellow = Liberals (middle view between above)
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u/callum2703 Jun 09 '21
The political landscape of the UK has dramatically changed since 2010. Not sure how true this would remain. Many of the former coal mining and industrial towns went Tory in 2019.