Polls from the beginning of the year show a substantial swing from
Labour to the Conservatives among people in the C2DE social grade - with
the Tories overtaking Labour over the course of the past four months. Ipso defines
C2's as skilled manual workers, D's as semi and unskilled manual workers and
E's as state pensioners, casual or lowest grade workers and the unemployed with
state benefits only. All of who make up C2DE. Since the beginning of the year there has been a seven-point swing pushing
the Conservatives up from 35% to 43% and Labour down from 46% to 40% among C2DE
voters.
On the flip side, yesterday the Guardian has published a
piece from Ian Warren, Director of Election Data, entitled 'Watch
out, Tories. Your southern strongholds are turning red'. Warren argues that ex-Londoners moving out of the city into the Home
Counties accounts for why the Conservatives did not do as well in these parts
of Southern England during last year’s General Election. This, he says,
explains Labour gains in Bedford, Brighton and Canterbury. Labour is currently attracting these suburban "affluent young
families" who would typically be in the ABC1 group (the opposite of C2DE)
and would normally vote Tory.
It is an irony that when Jeremy Corbyn came to power he promised
to reconnect the Labour Party with its traditional working class base who had
become disillusioned by New Labour. Yet, Tony Blair enjoyed far more support
among C2DE voters from 1997 and beyond. I have no doubt that in recent weeks Corbyn's response to the Russian
attack fed into these voters’ already unfavourable image of the Labour
leadership as unpatriotic. However, there are of course other bigger and long-term factors including
Brexit and the global backlash against globalisation all of which have pushed less affluent
voters towards the political Right.
As a
Labour campaigner in Essex I’ve put up with plenty of working class Tories on
the doorstep. It looks like the national party will also have to get used to
hearing from them too.