Red wall

• A Tory-to-Labour swing of 4.5% in 2023’s local elections fell marginally short of the 5% switch-around he needs to enter single-party government at Westminster.
• Labour made gains in this year’s red wall salvage operation, which included the successful recapture of councils in Stoke-on-Trent and Blackpool.
• And why is it still struggling to fully exploit the mix of ennui and anger felt by so many voters who turned Tory in 2019?

Buses, doctors, jobs

• Doing so gave me a clear sense of the concerns preoccupying red-wall and left-behind voters.
• Most apparent was the need for a vision of a more socially just, interventionist approach to regulating the economy and reviving public services.
• This is the most likely way to motivate a resurgence in Labour support.
• A carless foodbank volunteer, from nearby Gorleston, said she had been forced to turn down several paid jobs in town because she had no way of reaching work in time for the start of her shifts.

Asking the wrong questions

• As ever, perceptions of which issues are most salient to voters depend on what exactly you ask them and how you frame your questions.
• The “deep-dive” focus groups that pollster Deborah Mattinson conducted in ex-Labour strongholds for her 2020 book, Beyond the Red Wall, were almost exclusively concerned with asking why so many people had abandoned the party in 2019.
• In the three years since, Mattinson, now Starmer’s director of strategy, seems to have continued asking herself (and subsequent focus-groups) much the same questions.