Levelling Up

While there are plenty of competing explanations for Labour's loss of Hartlepool, one that nearly everyone agrees on is that the constituents were in favour of "levelling up". I'm not so sure. Were a UK government to undertake a massive programme of industrial investment and urban regeneration for the North and Midlands it would predominantly (and assuming it acts rationally) be putting money into the large cities, as that is where most of the industrial capacity already is, where the skilled labour is to be found, and where the multiplier effects would be greatest. Newcastle and Manchester would benefit far more than Hartlepool or Wigan, not just in absolute terms but in relative terms too. What it's not going to do is bias investment towards small towns that were once mono-industrial (reliant on shipbuilding, mining or steel production, or on a single large manufacturer) but which now lack much potential outside of local provisioning (warehouses, logistics etc). At best, these will be dormitory towns for the conurbations (so what investment they'll get may be focused on transport links and possibly schools). 

It's also worth noting that "green jobs" will not generally mean former shipbuilders making windmills or ex-miners installing geothermal heat pumps. There will a bit of that, but the bulk of the work will be in loft insulation and other forms of energy efficiency, so they will be distributed where the current population is. It's also the case that the loose definition of a green job (a net benefit to the environment versus assumed alternatives) means that it will encompass rail transport, electrification for cars and other activities that are most intense within large cities. Green manufacturing (of solar panels, for example) will mainly happen where manufacturing already happens and where there are established distribution networks, which means a lot of it will be offshored to the Far East (China already accounts for two-thirds of the global production of photovoltaic technology). Green jobs will not provide the direct and indirect employment opportunities that a shipyard or a colliery once did.

Retired homeowners in places like Hartlepool see "levelling-up" in terms of public spending rather than industrial investment. The now infamous vox-pop on BBC Breakfast, in which an older resident blamed Labour for the loss of the local hospital A&E department and the magistrates' court, despite these closures having nothing to do with the council, was interpreted by many as either stupidity or bias (i.e. the failure of the interviewer to challenge the misunderstanding), but it also suggests that Labour's historic identification with quality public services is weakening. This isn't because Labour has failed to deliver - there were real gains under Blair and Brown - and certainly not that the Tories are seen as more credible after a decade of austerity. Rather it's because voters in these areas still seek to articulate their interests in the language of the collective rather than the personal. But while they want a healthy economy and improvements to local services (bread and roses), I suspect what they want above all is a guarantee that property values will be maintained and social care will be better funded, which is highly personal. 

If the Tories only manage to do the former, and there is plenty of reason to believe that this will be the limit of their ambition, hence the absence of social care from the Queen's Speech this week, then it will probably be enough to retain the support of this electoral bloc. Failing to "level up" will not prove as damaging as some fear. It is clear from a revealing Conservative Home post by Rachel Wolf, who co-authored the Tories' 2019 manifesto, that the party recognises that what this demographic chiefly wants is a sense of value and security, hence reviving the high street and addressing crime are prioritised over employment and apprenticeships. This view receives support from a number of unlikely quarters, such as Peter Mandelson commenting on the "smartness and tidiness" of privately-owned homes in his former constituency (without perhaps appreciating that this is orthogonal to civic pride), and George Monbiot noting how the erosion of the state's capability to enforce the law has left the old feeling vulnerable and anxious (without perhaps appreciating how press reports on "online scams" are no less a moral panic than tales of rampant knife crime).

The Tories know that retired homeowners, who spend a disproportionate amount of their time lamenting the disappearance of familiar shops and fretting about burglary, are a pivotal vote in so-called "Red Wall" constituencies. And because these deindustrialised towns aren't going to be reindustrialised, an ageing population and high rates of home ownership are likely to be persistent features. One of the reasons why retired homeowners religiously visit the high steet is to view the windows of estate agents. Many interpret the relative affluence of the high street itself as a window onto the town's intrinsic value and therefore a reflection of their own asset's potential. In contrast, Labour has (yet again) vowed to focus relentlessly on "work and jobs". This is fine, but it fails to acknowledge that the levelling-up issue for its potential voters (i.e. the actual working population rather than nostalgic retirees) is more about wages than unemployment. To be fair, some get this and it's likely that pay will become another area of friction with a leadership whose instincts are to revive the business-friendly mantras around skills and education that distinguished New Labour. 

The claim that Labour "cannot win the votes of left social conservatives because their social values are more important to them than their economic interests" mistakes the situation. Social conservatism isn't a novelty, and it didn't dissuade "traditional voters" supporting Labour administrations in the past. Had it really been so much more important, Harold Wilson wouldn't have risked supporting the abolition of the death penalty nor Tony Blair repealing Section 28. What is new is the now former working class fraction of retired homeowners anxious about inheritance and care costs. This is a demographic that has grown to significance since the 1980s and whose class consciousness has been shaped by the media's focus on property and financial risk. If anything, their economic interests are even more salient because of the potential uncertainty of property values subject to both the vagaries of the wider economy and a more localised erosion due to crime (real and imagined) and declining amenities. They may express their concerns through a variety of media-friendly social and cultural tropes, from immigration and statues to travellers and trans rights, but these are clearly symbolic of more personal concerns over control and stability.

Though a significant element of the population, it's important to recognise that this is a pivotal electoral bloc only in certain constituencies, specifically those where retirees and homeownership are high and many of the young have left town. James Kanagasooriam's original coinage of the "red wall" recognised that these demographics meant certain seats should probably already have drifted to the Tories before 2019 (Hartlepool was trending that way), but later media usage has reduced the label to little more than "In the North, previously staunch Labour, collapsed overnight" (this narrow focus ignores the seats in the West of England where a similar dynamic helped the Conservatives supplant the Liberal Democrats in 2015). The framing has led Keir Starmer to think that these seats can be flipped back to Labour by adopting socially conservative policies in conjunction with a (slightly) more interventionist economic programme. But this ignores the underlying trend and that such a strategy dissuades potential voters as much as it persuades. Is there a different approach Labour could adopt that might reverse the trend? If there is, it will depend on enthusing the actual working class in seats like Hartlepool, as happened as recently as 2017.

What might this alternative approach look like? Rationally, Labour should be appealing to working people on pay and job quality. Over and above promises on green jobs and apprenticeships that will benefit only a minority, one policy that has the potential to improve wages and encourage more secure work for many more people is UBI. Evolving the furlough scheme and pre-existing tax credits into a basic income has the transformative potential that Right to Buy had in the 1980s, both in the sense of dramatically altering the circumstances of substantial numbers of people and in providing a profitable electoral dividing line between the Conservatives and Labour. Just as it was the latter who made tentative steps towards the allowing council house sales in the 1970s, only to be gazumped by the Tories, so there is a risk now that if Labour doesn't champion a more systematic and less punitive approach to income support, the field will once more be left to an opportunistic Conservative Party that could introduce a more discriminatory scheme that rewards their own electoral coalition, much as they did with the pensions triple-lock. 

Appointing Rachel Reeves as Shadow Chancellor doesn't augur well. Not only has she built her political career on a punitive approach to welfare, but she's a former Bank of England economist who is most comfortable with fiscal orthodoxy. The report that Keir Starmer intends to spend his summer talking to people who don't vote Labour (i.e. those retired homeowners again), rather than rallying the party's supporters, is also dispiriting. The problem in 2019 may have been ex-Labour voters attracted by the Tories promise to "get Brexit done", but the problem in Hartlepool last week was more about Labour supporters staying home in the face of a party with no plan or enthusiasm to get anything much done. Levelling up the country will probably turn out to be no more than rhetoric, but the term might have more significance for the Labour Party if it can be persuaded to build its policy offer outwards, rather than focusing on the Red Wall (which now plays a similar "moderating" role to the swing voter of old) or by retreating to the Blairite learned helplessness of exogenous change (globalisation then, technology now).