Why the Red Wall is Keir’s nightmare

Broken Heartlands Macmillan £20

★★★★★

You guys should get out of London. Go and talk to people who are not rich Remainers,’ Dominic Cummings once told a mob of hacks on his doorstep. Sebastian Payne is one of the few Westminster journalists who didn’t need telling.

A deep dive into the ‘Red Wall’, Broken Heartlands is first-class political reportage. As Payne is a boy from Gateshead in the North East, it’s also sweetly personal. This isn’t a political safari but a journey towards home, to the voters who are the author’s family and friends, and people like them.

The result should be considered required reading for anyone interested in British politics or, indeed, in winning elections. It’s soon to be found on the bedside tables of Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer (above, with Angela Rayner), one suspects.

At the heart of it is a question: can Boris do it again, or was 2019 a total fluke? Or as Payne puts it, was the election a one-off event or evidence of a ‘structural shift’ in UK politics? The answer is yes to both. Brexit shattered people’s inherited party loyalties. Jeremy Corbyn was utterly loathed. And Boris – with his charm and va-vavoom – was loved. And ‘love’ is the word used by Payne’s subjects, as they jostle for selfies and Covid-friendly elbow-bumps with the visiting Prime Minister.

He also highlights a key, long-term trend. Put bluntly, it’s not grim up North any more. Decaying buildings aside, swathes of the North have been recovering nicely from the closure of the mines a generation ago. An economic rebirth has taken place, with new industries springing up in places such as North West Durham – now home to one of the UK’s biggest wine importers, don’t you know.

The increasingly prosperous voters there were natural Tories; it just took Boris and Brexit to make them realise that. This book will give poor Keir Starmer sleepless nights.