For better or worse, the Tories are now the Brexit party

The results of the local elections not only throw light on the realignment of British politics but also how the Conservative Party electorate is being rapidly and radically transformed.

This is a story about two Britains. In the young, ethnically diverse and largely pro-Remain capital, Labour polled strongly, even if the party failed to capture key targets like Wandsworth and Westminster. Yet in the typically older, less diverse, more working-class and strongly pro-Leave towns, it was the Conservative Party that was often celebrating.

Labour’s advance in places like Waltham Forest, Southwark, Hammersmith, Fulham and Enfield cemented its dominance in the capital, while the party continues to draw votes in the culturally liberal university towns. This also reflects how, throughout the West, left-wing parties from the United States to Europe have increasingly strong anchors in the big cities while conservatives and populists are recruiting their strongest support in smaller towns and the countryside. This urban-rural divide is now one of the key fault lines in the West.

This, in turn, reflects a much broader conflict of values that is playing itself out, a battle between culturally liberal cosmopolitans who tend to congregate in the big cities and socially conservative traditionalists who put much higher value on the nation state. Whereas in other democracies this battle has yet to intensify, in Britain it was magnified by the Brexit vote.

This is now having profound consequences. The Conservative Party electorate is no longer the one that propelled David Cameron to a surprise majority government in 2015. Since then, it has become decidedly more pro-Brexit, opposed to mass immigration and socially conservative. Today, it is an electorate that is expecting a meaningful Brexit, one that includes leaving the single market, and which is followed by comprehensive reform of Britain’s immigration system.

Consider the map of Conservative support. Across the country, Prime Minister Theresa May and her party scored their most impressive gains in often working-class and strongly pro-Leave areas; places like Dudley, Nuneaton, Peterborough, Epping Forest, Basildon, Havant, Amber Valley, Bolton, Castle Point, Cannock Chase, Derby, Rochford, Sunderland, Tamworth and Walsall. These are areas not only where voters are instinctively receptive to the ‘Brexit Means Brexit’ mantra, and the promise to curb immigration, but where many nodded in agreement with Theresa May’s promise to do more for "ordinary working-class people".

Many of these areas had previously fuelled Nigel Farage and UKIP, abandoning the mainstream between 2013 and 2016 to force their concerns about the EU, immigration and a distant Westminster establishment onto the agenda. Given that these voters have already shown themselves willing to jump ship, only a fool would ignore them again.

These places are now fundamental to the Conservative Party’s quest to keep Corbyn from power. It is perfectly possible for the party to win a majority. It requires the mobilization of a loose alliance of blue-collar workers and traditional social conservatives, while holding a line or making further advances in Scotland. The ‘Nick Timothy Strategy’ was fundamentally correct in its assessment of how the plates of British politics are moving but the execution of that strategy was extremely poor, not least during the election campaign last year.

Some, instead, are advising conservatives to try and re-capture London, the university towns and millennials, as though Britain were still in the 2010-2015 era. This is a recipe for defeat. Its advocates fail to acknowledge how the tectonic plates have shifted. Those groups are gone, at least in the current electoral cycle. Such a strategy would only spark apathy across pro-Brexit Britain and destine the Conservative Party to losses.

Consider the numbers. Outside of London, the Conservative Party share of the vote increased by 8 points, compared to Labour’s 7 points. Meanwhile, in areas where more than six in ten voters supported Leave, the Conservative vote share surged by 13 points but in areas where less than five in ten backed Leave it dropped by 1 point. This continues a pattern that emerged at the general election last year, whereby the Conservative vote advanced most strongly in pro-Leave and working-class seats.

This too reveals a big challenge for Labour. It cannot win power by relying on the big cities and university towns alone. Labour’s failure to deliver strong performances in non-London and pro-Leave England, notably in areas like Derby and Nuneaton, point to a problem. Labour is stacking up votes in areas of the country where it does not need them and so unless the party has set its sights on a shaky coalition with the SNP and Liberal Democrats then it will need to think hard about how it too can connect with pro-Brexit Britain.

British politics, therefore, is in a process of realignment, and one that still has some way to run. The future is unpredictable but the building blocks for polarization are clearly visible. As typically pro-Brexit, working-class and non-graduate voters shift over to the Conservatives, and millennial graduates and culturally liberal middle-class professionals in the big cities and university towns shift over to Labour, the fault lines are increasingly set in stone.