Are we seeing the end of the Brexit realignment?

Or is it just getting submerged under the anti-Tory tide

Every election there is some fashionable idea that circulates; that people read, agree with, repost, bring into conversation and into their writing. This time it seems “the end of the realignment” is a candidate. As ever, with these ideas, it contains a kernel of truth but is also misleading.

The argument goes something like this:

In 2019, there was a very strong effect of voting Remain or Leave on choosing the Conservatives or Labour in the general election. It manifested itself in the big geographic story of the night – the Conservatives winning constituencies thought to be forever safe for Labour, because those constituencies had more Leave voters, and those Leave voters swung their support behind Boris Johnson to Get Brexit Done.

Britain’s electorate and its electoral geography had become ‘realigned’, actually (as I have shown) in a two-step process in 2017 and 2019 (Green, 2021). By 2019, Conservative support in the north of England and the midlands represented the collapse of Labour support in areas of higher-than-average unemployment. Working class voters were more likely to support the Conservatives – breaking (so it was argued) the hitherto unbreakable tie between Labour and the working class – and the Conservative coalition became formed of older voters, most without university degrees. Meanwhile, Labour’s support was concentrated more in cities, where younger graduates and minorities supported them.

This also highlighted the growing importance of so-called ‘culture war divides’, because younger and older voters. They had always been separated by their social-conservative or liberal values, due to different generational experiences, as well as attitudes around immigration, nationhood, and internationalism, and were now similarly divided on the most important issue of the day: Britain’s exit from the EU. These bundles of issues, and these generational differences in politics, started to infuse and animate political debate and commentary.

However, the issue of Brexit has now gone away, or rather – Brexit has become the quiet uncle that sits in the corner of the room with no-one really listening to him. It doesn’t suit the Conservatives to talk about Brexit, because it hasn’t delivered the many benefits that were promised, and Conservative ranks are divided about how to solve one of its motivating concerns; border security.

It doesn’t suit Labour to talk about Brexit because they don’t want to alienate their former Labour-Leave voters by pointing out that they’re not really happy with how those people voted.

Brexit has also dropped off the list of concerns mentioned by the public. That’s not at all surprising, a pandemic is going to do that. Followed by a prolonged inflationary crisis and the build-up of problems with their roots in austerity; the state of public services, and a housing crisis for younger generations.

In the last few years we’ve had multiple by-election results, and consecutive local election results, that make it look like the big geographic Brexit divide is pretty much over and done with. That was very much consistent with the results – and the accompanying interpretation and analysis – from last week.

Labour are recovering, with large swings in ‘red wall’ areas. A swing of 26 per cent in the Blackpool South by-election last week was coupled with Labour gaining ground in the likes of Hyndburn, Hartlepool, and Sunderland in the council votes. Conservative support was dropping a bit more in areas in which the party had previously been stronger, and in areas that had voted more strongly for Leave.

In February, Wellingborough saw the largest ever drop in Conservative support in a by-election - a constituency that was estimated to have supported Leave by 64% in 2016.

Moreover, Labour was also making gains in more affluent areas of the country last week, such as in parts of North Yorkshire and councils like Rushmoor.

The geographic Brexit split looks like it’s dismantling.

The other key piece of evidence is that the Conservatives have been haemorrhaging support among their 2019 Leave voters. As their poll ratings have collapsed, it is predominantly Conservative Leave voters who have deserted the Tories. Their ‘Leave coalition is fragmenting’, losing the support of Leavers in higher numbers than Remainers, so, surely, this is further evidence of the end of the Brexit relationship.

The individual-level Brexit divide looks like it is dismantling.

Both of these things are undoubtedly the case. However, both have problems of interpretation for what we infer about ‘the end of the Brexit realignment’.

The remainder of this post warns against some of those leaps of inference, makes a case for thinking carefully about what we mean by a ‘realignment’, and then explains why we – those of us who look after the British Election Study this year – think the Brexit divide will still underpin the next general election outcome.