The red wall is a term used in British politics to describe the UK Parliament constituencies in the Midlands and Northern England that have historically supported the Labour Party. The term was coined by pollster James Kanagasooriam. At the 2019 general election, many of these parliamentary seats were won by the Conservative Party, with the media describing the red wall as having "turned blue".
At the 2021 Hartlepool by-election, the Conservatives won for the first time in decades in another red wall seat. The 2021 Batley and Spen by-election was also for a red wall seat; Labour held the seat, albeit with a reduced majority. In the 2022 Wakefield by-election, Labour regained their first red wall seat; this was also their first gain in any by-election since 2012. At the 2024 general election, Labour regained almost all of these seats, with the media describing the red wall as having been "rebuilt".
Background Historically, the working class-dominated constituencies in the North Midlands and Northern England tended to favour the Labour Party. As early as the 1906 general election, two-thirds of Labour candidates elected came from Northern English constituencies. In 2014, political scientists Robert Ford and Matthew Goodwin documented the erosion by the UK Independence Party (UKIP) of the Labour-supporting working-class vote in their book Revolt on the Right.
At the 2017 general election, the Conservatives lost seats overall but gained six Labour-held seats in the Midlands and North, which Labour had held for at least three decades: North East Derbyshire, Walsall North, Mansfield, Stoke-on-Trent South, Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, and Copeland (held from the 2017 Copeland by-election). In 2019, the Conservatives increased their majority in the seats previously gained. Former Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage suggested prior support of many northern Labour voters for UKIP, which he had also led, and the Brexit Party made it easier for them to vote Conservative.
2019 general election results
In the 2019 United Kingdom general election the Conservative Party had a net gain of 48 seats in England. The Labour Party had a net loss of 47 seats in England, losing approximately 20% of its 2017 general election support in red wall seats. Labour lost in the election 36 seats that voted for Brexit, and Conservatives leader and then-prime minister Boris Johnson's primary campaign pledge was to swiftly act on withdrawal from the European Union.
Voters in seats like Bolsover, and swing voters of the type thought to be typified by Workington man, cited Brexit and the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn as reasons why they chose not to vote Labour. The party lost so much support in the red wall in some seats, such as Sedgefield, Ashfield, and Workington, that even without the Tory vote share increase, the Conservatives would still have gained those seats.
Notable examples of red wall constituencies taken by the Conservatives Constituency County % Leavein 2016 EU referendum Description Ref.2024 Result Ashfield Nottinghamshire 70.5% Held by Labour since 1955, except for a brief Conservative by-election victory in 1977–79.It was won by Gloria De Piero in 2010 with a majority of 192 votes for Labour. She stood down in 2019, and her former office manager Lee Anderson took the seat after defecting to the Conservatives.Labour finished third behind local independent Jason Zadrozny, who also stood on a Eurosceptic platform. Reform UK gain Bassetlaw Nottinghamshire 68.3% Held by Labour since 1935.The Conservatives won more than half of the vote share, with a Labour to Conservative swing of 18.4%, the largest in the country, and a majority of over 14,000 votes for the new MP. Labour regain Bishop Auckland County Durham 60.6% Held by Labour at every UK general election except one since 1918, though its majority decreased in every election from 2001 to 2017, by which time it had been reduced to just 502 votes.Returned a Conservative MP for the first time in its 134-year history, with a majority of 7,962. Labour regain Blyth Valley Northumberland 59.8% Held by Labour at every election except one since creation in 1950.The constituency declaration, shortly after 11:30pm, was the election's first flip and regarded as an early sign of the electoral trend. abolished Labour gained new seats Bolsover Derbyshire 70.2% Held by Labour since its creation in 1950. 87-year old Socialist Campaign Group stalwart Dennis Skinner was defeated, having held the seat for 49 years (since 1970). Labour regain Don Valley South Yorkshire 68.5% Held by Labour since 1922.Caroline Flint, previously a Labour minister and Leave supporter, was defeated having served since 1997. abolished Labour gained new seats Dudley North West Midlands 71.4% Held by Labour since creation in 1997 (predecessor seats since 1970).Won by a majority of 11,533 on a Labour to Conservative swing of 15.8%. Retiring Labour MP was Ian Austin who became Independent and encouraged people to vote Conservative. Labour gain new seat Heywood and Middleton Greater Manchester 62.4% Held by Labour since its creation in 1983.It was almost lost to UKIP at a 2014 by-election in which Labour retained the seat by just 617 votes, but Labour majorities had recovered in 2015 and 2017 to over 5,000 and 7,000, respectively. By-elections usually have significantly lower levels of voter turnout compared to ordinary general elections in the UK. Labour regain Leigh Greater Manchester 63.4% Held by Labour since 1922.Formerly the seat of Andy Burnham from 2001 to 2017 when he became Mayor of Greater Manchester. Labour gain new seat Sedgefield County Durham 58.9% Held by Labour since 1935 (although the seat was abolished 1974–1983).Formerly the seat of Prime Minister Tony Blair from his first election to the Commons in 1983 until his resignation from Parliament in June 2007. Labour gain new seat Wakefield West Yorkshire 62.6% Held by Labour since a by-election in 1932, although the majority in 1983 was only 360 votes, and since 2010 had been marginal.The incumbent MP Mary Creagh was a prominent opponent of Brexit. Creagh confronted Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in Parliament five days after the election.Regained in 2022 by-election Workington Cumbria 60.3% Held by Labour at every election except one since creation in 1918."Workington man" was a profile seen as typical of northern, older, male, working-class voters who watch rugby league.Won by Mark Jenkinson, previously a candidate in Workington for UKIP, with a majority of 4,176. Labour gains replacement seats
2024 general election results
At the 2024 general election, Labour regained 34 of the 36 Brexit-voting seats it lost in 2019. The Conservatives held on in Keighley and Ilkley and Stockton West. Labour only increased its vote share from about 38% to 41%, however; the Conservative share decreased from about 47% to 24%, while Reform UK received about 22%.
Labour parliamentary caucus In November 2024, a few dozen Labour MPs formed the 'Red Wall Caucus' to push the government to be more vocal on immigration and stop Reform UK gaining in their constituencies. The group is led by Jo White. The group is reported to be working with Labour Together, the think tank.
One month later, PoliticsHome reported the caucus had 30 MPs; the BBC reported this was around 40 in February 2025.
Criticism of the term Generalisation The red wall metaphor has been criticised as a generalisation. In the aftermath of the 2019 general election, author and Newcastle University lecturer Alex Niven said that it was "a convenient term of journalese that seemed to arise in the last days of the 2019 campaign to describe a large, disparate part of the country north of Oxford." Lewis Baston called it "a mythical wall" and "a way of making a patronising generalisation about a huge swathe of England (and a corner of Wales)". He argued that the red wall is politically diverse, and includes bellwether seats that swung with the national trend, as well as former mining and industrial seats that show a more unusual shift.
In July 2020, Rosie Lockwood from the Institute for Public Policy Research said: "For years the Westminster establishment has sought to define the north through soundbites. The most recent is 'the red wall'." In an article for The Daily Telegraph that same month, Royston Smith, member of Parliament for Southampton Itchen, made the case that his seat in post-industrial Southampton was one of the first red wall seats gained from the Labour Party when he became its Conservative MP at the 2015 general election.
In July 2021, following Labour's narrow victory in the Batley and Spen by-election, David Edgerton, professor of Modern British History at King's College London, denounced the concept of the red wall and pointed out that "the belief that working-class people traditionally voted Labour has only been true (and barely so) for a mere 25 years of British history, and a long time ago." He went on to say:
"The phenomenon of a working-class red wall is an ideological concoction that benefits Labour's enemies. It makes little sociological or psephological sense today, and the fragment of the past it reflects is one of Tory working classes. Yet this group has come to define how Labour thinks of the working class. That the party views this Tory analysis as a bellwether of its fortunes speaks to its collapse as an independent, transformative political force. If it is ever to win significant support today among real English people, Labour needs to understand its own history, celebrate its successes and love itself, its members and its voters.Labour undoubtedly still needs the working-class vote. Winning this means creating a Labour party for workers and trade unionists in the present day, not those of a mythologised past. Doing better among those workers than Labour did in its heyday would also be necessary for electoral success. The party needs to relearn not only how to get votes, but how to keep them too, which it has failed to do for decades. To make all this possible it needs to present a real alternative with vigour and confidence, and to stop acting as if it believed that this uniquely dangerous Conservative government had the British past, present and future in its bones."
Demographics In January 2022, Anthony Wells, director of Political Research at YouGov, wrote an article titled "Stop obsessing about the Red Wall". In it, he criticised political commentators and politicians who use the term "based upon a perception of what the author's idea of a stereotypical working class Conservative voter would think, rather missing the point of James [Kanagasooriam]'s original hypothesis that voters in those areas were actually demographically similar to more Tory areas ... [T]hese were seats that for cultural reasons were less Conservative than you would have expected given their demographics. To some degree that has unwound in some areas. There is probably not an easy way for Labour to rebuild that reluctance to consider voting Tory in places where it has collapsed. It is also worth considering whether it has even fully played out... it may be there is further realignment to go."
Class and social issues Newcastle University geography professor Danny MacKinnon said that the weakening relationship between Labour and red wall voters can be traced back to the late 1990s, when New Labour aimed for middle-class support. He said that "Labour became more of a middle-class party. [Red wall areas] have older voters who have had lower living standards since 2010. There's the phrase 'left behind'. And there's a sense of cultural alienation from Labour and metropolitan cities."