Johnson’s task now is to end Labour in England – this is how to do it

In Hartlepool, people are worried deeply about economic recovery and getting their finances and daily lives back to normal. Furlough and business support impressed them, as did the vaccine rollout. Nationally from Labour, they mostly heard about supposed sleaze and existential identity issues.

Unsurprisingly, Hartlepool only heard the Conservatives and the party duly smashed Labour to pieces.

The big lesson of the week is this: the Conservatives have become the party of quietly patriotic people who rely on a steady weekly or monthly wage to look after their families. They are establishing a coalition of working people stretching from posh Sevenoaks to struggling Hartlepool – and most places in between. They are the party of the English Workforce. (Celtic issues are more complex).

It was obvious to anyone with half a brain that Labour’s focus on sleaze was pointless. You cannot make this stuff stick when your own politicians have been accused of similar and worse – and when people expected vast, rapid spending on Covid mitigation. Before the 2019 election, the scale of Conservative ambition was narrow: supplement votes from their traditional supporters with the support of the English working class and lower middle class – a group widely ignored by politicians in the past two decades. The Conservatives were right to focus campaign efforts on working-class communities. Their success in appealing to these voters – and Labour’s obsession with niche issues – means the Conservatives’ ambition can be much greater. Their new ambition should be to come up with a policy and communications platform that unites the economically diverse coalition of working people for the long-term. In other words: to end the Labour Party in England.

This should not be as difficult as it sounds. Whether you are in a six-bedroom house in Sevenoaks or a three-bedroom rented semi in Hartlepool, problems are only different in scale. Both groups worry about job security, mortgage and car repayments, decent local schools, paying for holidays and all the rest. Quiet patriotism unites this group, too.

This means keeping taxes as low as possible, encouraging house-building (for renters and owners), ensuring newly recruited police are visible and active, boosting civic life in towns and continuing to fund the NHS at high levels. It means being patriotic in a solid, dignified way – standing up to the excesses of the cultural Left where appropriate.

They have established a coalition of working people from posh Sevenoaks to struggling Hartlepool

Some still encourage the Conservatives to pivot to affluent, highly educated, urban youngsters on social and cultural issues and the environment. The idea being that this group is growing and its views will become dominant in the medium term. This would be a big mistake.

The environment is becoming a more important issue for everyone and it is possible to engage even lessaffluent working class voters on green issues. But you cannot happily engage most voters – particularly not the sort who live in Hartlepool – on most social and cultural issues.

The Conservatives should not look at Starmer’s Labour Party with pity; they should look at them to learn how not to talk to the public.