If Labour is to win, it must win Swindon

In this surprise December election, the Labour Party faces a historic uphill struggle to get into government. While in 2017 the party managed to increase its number of seats against all the odds, in 2019, even the most optimistic Labour supporters would hesitate to bet on the same result happening again.

One place that’s drawn the attention of pundits and pollsters is my hometown of Swindon, a town of 220,000 people on the M4 corridor, on the very north-eastern border of the South West of England.

For over three decades, the town has been a political trendsetter for the nation. Since the creation of the town’s current two parliamentary seats in 1997, both North Swindon and South Swindon have been taken by the winning party. (From 1918 to 1997 the town was represented by a single MP.) You have to go back to 1979 to find an election when Swindon was not taken by the party that went on to win most Commons seats.

Swindon is also a good indication of the general political direction of the South of England outside London, a region that encompasses some 20 million people. While geography locates it in the South West, it is neither leafy nor affluent enough to be a target for the Liberal Democrats (the party achieved just under 4 per cent in the 2017 vote). For the same reason, the Conservatives have struggled to turn Swindon into a safe seat since they entered government in 2010, despite increasing their vote share. Much like the country at large, it is Labour and the Tories who jostle for power here.

As one of my old college lecturers (London born-and-bred) observed, Swindon is a town without large divides, but one whose population is overwhelmingly working-to-middle class. Labour’s increasing appeal to the high-earners and the well-educated, at the expense of its traditional working-class base, presents a unique problem in Swindon.

In the 2017 election, for the first time in living memory, being working class did not mean you were more likely to vote Labour. In fact, C2Des — a socioeconomic category that is broadly synonymous with the working class — split nationally in favour of the Tories by a couple of percentage points. That’s an unprecedented development which threatens Labour’s assault on constituencies that it once classed as eminently winnable — like Swindon.

Crucially for Labour, not only does the town lack its own university — Swindon is the largest centre of population in the UK without one — the town also has the lowest number of school leavers in England who go on to study for a degree. This cultural marker distances Swindon from a Labour Party whose natural constituency is now the cosmopolitan, university-educated city-dweller.

Labour’s ambiguous Brexit position also presents problems. Swindon voted Leave by 54.7 per cent to 45.3 per cent and in this year’s European elections, the Brexit Party came first with a shocking 35 per cent of the vote — more than the Labour and Conservative vote combined. Converting Labour to a clear Remain position risks alienating a key segment of the town’s electorate, a situation that will feel familiar to party activists right across England.

Labour’s candidates in the area are another factor worth considering. Kate Linnegar, the candidate for North Swindon, is cut from the Corbynite cloth and was even investigated over claims of anti-Semitism after sharing a Facebook post that referred to “Holocaust-mongers”. Linnegar has since apologised and claimed she has “developed a deeper understanding about the issue”. While Swindon does not have a large Jewish population, her proximity to Corbyn, a man who is not widely liked in Swindon, only places a Labour victory further from view.

On the other hand, Sarah Church, the candidate for the southern half of the town, is a candidate more to the centre of the current parliamentary party. A former member of the armed services, she also appeals to natural Tory voters. South Swindon is also a more marginal constituency and 43rd on Labour’s list of target seats. North Swindon sits at 104.

In another world, Labour should be doing far better in my hometown. Honda’s main UK factory has announced it will be leaving by 2021, threatening the livelihoods of an estimated 12,000 workers. Both those employed by Honda and the workers involved in the supply chains and the wider local economy. Labour’s brand of economic populism should do well here.

Large retailers are leaving the town in droves, with House of Fraser, Morrisons, Argos and Starbucks all announcing departures in recent months. A boom-town in the 1980s, Swindon is now a place that feels stagnant at best. Labour has spent the past two years laser-focused on the mid-to-large sized towns that are crucial steps on their path to government. Although, if polls are to be believed, their message is not yet cutting through.