I’m starting with a confession. In more than two decades of advising Labour I never ran a poll or focus group in a so-called red wall seat. I — along with many in the Labour camp — simply assumed those long-held Labour seats in the Midlands and North to be in the bag, concentrating instead on more typical “swing” constituencies.
The Tories did the same, fellow travellers on the well-trodden path to weather vane seats that switched allegiance with every new government. Yet, last year, Labour, in its worst defeat since 1935, lost 60 seats – two thirds in the red wall. Almost five million people, ignored by Westminster for years, woke up, on December 13, 2019, slightly surprised to find themselves centre-stage.
In
