How Farage helped Boris to be a true One Nation Conservative

His decision to stand down Brexit Party candidates freed Tories to fight harder in Labour heartlands, writes Brian Monteith

There is much to digest from the feast of information provided by the general election. Two strong narratives deserve attention, not least because I do not see them given adequate scrutiny elsewhere. The first is how the Conservatives managed to do so well in Labour heartlands in Wales and across England’s North and Midlands – and second, why the Tory vote dropped in Scotland when it rose in England and Wales.

It is difficult to understate the psychological impact of the Conservative gains in the north of England, not just on the Labour Party’s self-confidence but more importantly on the culture of political tribalism that has been turned on its head.

The decision of Nigel Farage, announced in Hartlepool, that the Brexit Party would not contest the 317 seats won by the Conservatives at the last election was a key turning point of the election. At a stroke it protected the Conservative flank from the Liberal Democrats, who might have benefited from a split between Leave supporters, especially in constituencies in the South and South West that had supported Remain or were only marginally Leave. Farage’s aim was to halt any possibility of a second referendum arising out of a hung parliament and in this he succeeded, putting Jo Swinson’s campaign into a tailspin she never recovered from.

Intentionally or inadvertently, Farage’s decision also ensured the Conservatives had a firmer foundation to go forward from. Rather than having to defend Tory marginals, higher national spending and the targeting of activists on the ground could be redirected to Labour marginals – especially in Leave-voting Labour seats in Wales, the North and Midlands. Boris Johnson himself was suddenly able to reschedule his campaign visits away from primarily Tory areas to include opposition territory such as Sunderland – giving weight to his claim he was seeking to build a onenation government that had the interest of all the people at heart.

For some in the Conservative campaign Farage’s decision to put country before party was still not enough: they wanted the Brexit Party to withdraw from even more seats, avowing he was still splitting the Leave vote and risking a Corbyn government. This claim (often amounting to the bullying and emotional blackmail of Farage’s candidates through social media and a Daily Mail email campaign) fed off the genuine unpopularity of Jeremy Corbyn amongst many Labour voters but also helped drive them towards voting Tory. The scare tactics were, however, misplaced and exaggerated – thanks to Farage’s generosity Johnson was already sailing towards a victory. The real question was by how much?

By focusing on Labour seats, I argued repeatedly in these pages that what would transpire is the “Thurrock Effect”, whereby the campaigning of the Brexit Party would so weaken Labour support that Conservatives could gain seats never before dreamed of, as had happened in Thurrock in 2015 and 2017 thanks to votes for Ukip. We can now see that theory became reality as seats such as Blyth Valley, Bolton North East, and the two Bury seats of North and South, all turned deep blue after decades of being blood red. Altogether I count 19 constituencies where the vote of the Brexit Party candidate was higher