In the first episode of Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics, a new podcast series from The Conversation Documentaries, we explore when the relationship between class and voting broke down and why.
In 1967, legendary political scientist Peter Pulzer wrote: “Class is the basis of British party politics; all else is embellishment and detail.”
His assertion reflected a long period in political history in which class identity mapped fairly neatly onto our voting habits. There were of course exceptions but, in short, if you were working class, you voted Labour and if you were middle or upper class, you voted Conservative.
John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research, says the working class were more concerned about inequality, and the middle class were more concerned with growing the economy.
Even back in the 1950s, 1960s, given that then the working class were more numerous than the middle class, the Conservative party was only ever able to win elections by having some success at appealing to working class voters. But equally now, as the occupational structure was changing, and we were becoming a majority middle class society, as opposed to a majority working class society, so Labour had to think a little bit about, well, hang on, how do we expand our class base?
The Labour party has continued to grapple with this question into the 21st century too, but for the most part, that underlying pattern stood: working class people voted Labour, and middle class people voted Conservative. Until the 2019 election.
By 2019 class voting seems to have “completely disappeared”, says Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, and it was hard to see class as a driving factor in the way people vote.
That is in part because a lot more middle class people are voting Labour and Liberal Democrats, but it’s also because a lot more working class people are voting Conservative … If you look at surveys of working class voters, they are still to the left of most voters when it comes to the economy and public services, but they are more authoritarian than most voters when it comes to cultural issues, particularly immigration and to some extent Brexit as well.
This was the year in which many working class voters turned away from Labour and towards the Conservatives. But the divide was more about Brexit than class. The Conservatives’ unusual electoral coalition of that year was united by Boris Johnson’s slogan “get Brexit done”.
If you look closely, however, class had not entirely left the political arena that year, as Paula Surridge, professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol explains. After the 2019 election, she conducted focus groups in red wall Labour seats that had shifted Conservative.
Class based images of politics came through in the way that people talked about politics … they would talk about people who are just out for themselves, wealthy people … You still pick up a really strong sense of, you know, there’s one law for the rich, one law for the poor … So I think that’s left politics in Britain still deeply coloured by class even if actually the straight up relationship between the individual parties and particular classes has broken down to a certain extent.
So what happened in 2024? While the full analysis of the vote is still ongoing, we already know the turnout was one of the lowest in history at 60%. From the early analysis he’s seen, Curtice says:
It looks as though, at least so far as Conservative and Labour is concerned, that actually the class division has not re-emerged, despite the fact that Labour in particular were hoping to reconnect with working class voters.
And yet, Labour’s next election success could depend on these voters – so much could change in the next five years. The new government would be wise to pay attention to the needs of the working class communities that feel left behind. As Geoffrey Evans, professor in the sociology of politics at the University of Oxford puts it:
There might be a bit more of the class politics that got marginalised under Blair hanging around still, because the problem hasn’t gone away. Whereas the situation for women and ethnic minorities got better, you would argue, in all sorts of ways, it has not for this group.
For more analysis, listen to the full episode of Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics on The Conversation Documentaries.
A transcript is available on Apple Podcasts.
Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics is produced and mixed by Anouk Millet for The Conversation. It’s supported by the National Centre for Social Research.
Newsclips in the episode from ITV News, The Telegraph, Guardian News, Elections UK, Sky News, TRT World and CNN-News18.
Listen to The Conversation Documentaries via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.
John Curtice receives funding from UKRI-ESRC. Tim Bale has previously received funding for research on the Conservative Party and party members from the Leverhulme Trust and from the Economic and Social Research Council. Geoffrey Evans does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics is supported by the National Centre for Social Research.
