Prof Pete Dorey
Professor of British Politics in the School of Law & Politics at Cardiff University. He has written 18 books, and over 100 journal articles and book chapters, many of them on electoral politics, and aspects of British Conservatism.
Email: dorey@cardiff.ac.uk
UK Election 2024
Section 4: Parties and the campaign
34. A changed but over-staged Labour Party and the political marketing weaknesses behind Starmer’s win (Prof Jennifer Lees-Marshment)
35. To leaflet or not to leaflet? The question of election leafleting in Sunderland Central (Prof Angela Smith, Dr Mike Pearce)
36. Beyond ‘my dad was a toolmaker’: what it’s really like to be working class in parliament (Dr Vladimir Bortun)
37. The unforced errors of foolish men: gender, race and the calculus of harm (Prof Karen Ross)
38. Election 2024 and rise of Reform UK: the beginning of the end of the Conservatives? (Dr Anthony Ridge-Newman)
39. The Weakening of the Blue Wall (Prof Pete Dorey)
40. The Conservative party, 1832-2024: an obituary (Dr Mark Garnett)
41. Bouncing back: the Liberal Democrat campaign (Prof Peter Sloman)
42. The Greens: riding two horses (Prof Neil Carter, Dr Mitya Pearson)
43. Party organisations and the campaign (Dr Danny Rye)
44. Local campaign messaging at the 2024 General Election (Dr Siim Trumm, Prof Caitlin Milazzo)
45. The value of getting personal: reflecting upon the role of personal branding in the General Election (Dr Jenny Lloyd)
46. Which constituencies were visited by each party leader and what this told us about their campaigns (Dr Hannah Bunting, Joely Santa Cruz)
47. The culture wars and the 2024 General Election campaign (Prof John Steel)
48. “Rishi’s D-Day Disaster”: authority, leadership and British military commemoration (Dr Natalie Jester)
49. Party election broadcasts: the quest for authenticity (Dr Vincent Campbell)
In the run-up to the 2024 general election, several demographic, economic and political trends had suggested that many erstwhile safe Conservative seats in southern England, including some previously safe seats in south-coast ‘retirement towns’, were under threat from the resurgent Liberal Democrats, while others were at risk from a Labour Party which had moved towards the ideological centre under Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership, and which was therefore viewed as ‘safe’ enough for some disillusioned ‘moderate’ Conservative voters to support.
One relatively recent trend which threatened to erode the Conservatives’ hitherto hegemony in the South of England was a steady influx of younger voters, partly due to the post-Covid shift to working-from-home, and partly due to unaffordable house prices in some previously popular cities. With younger, often professional or ‘creative’, workers increasingly working ‘remotely’, sundry satellite or seaside towns have witnessed a shift in their age profile, coupled with more ‘progressive’ or socially liberal values. This population shift has been compounded by the increasing unaffordability of housing in previously popular and vibrant cities like London, and Brighton. For example, the escalating cost of accommodation in bohemian Brighton has prompted some younger professionals to move along the Sussex coast, either east to Bexhill and Hastings, or west to Shoreham and Worthing, where relatively cheaper accommodation has facilitated a process of gentrification, and inter alia a cultural renewal and vibrancy in previously sedate retirement towns.
To compound these recent demographic trends, a further major challenge to the Conservatives in the 2024 general election was the increased prevalence and sophistication of tactical voting, with two particular developments acquiring importance. First, it is reported that sundry digital and social media campaigns like Swap My Vote encouraged tactical voting and informal ‘vote-swapping’, these often using graphics to illustrate which party was most likely to defeat the incumbent Conservative MP in specific marginal constituencies.
Second, there were reportedly numerous informal – never officially admitted – electoral pacts between the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats in key marginal constituencies, entailing a tacit agreement to cooperate by not actively campaigning against each other in a constituency where only one of them has a realistic chance of ousting the Conservatives.
Ultimately, both Labour and the Liberal Democrats won dozens of Conservative seats in southern England, reducing much of the Blue Wall to a pile of rubble. Some of these gains are highlighted in Table 1.
| Labour gains | Liberal Democrat gains |
| Aldershot | Cambridgeshire South |
| Banbury | Cheltenham |
| Basingstoke | Chesham and Amersham |
| Camborne and Redruth | Chichester |
| Cambridgeshire North West | Chippenham |
| Cornwall South East | Devon South |
| Dorset South | Didcot & Wantage |
| Dover & Deal | Eastbourne |
| Folkestone and Hythe | Eastleigh |
| Gloucester | Ely and Cambridgeshire East |
| Hampshire North East | Epsom and Ewell |
| Hastings and Rye | Frome and Somerset East |
| Hemel Hempstead | North East Hampshire |
| Hertfordshire Noth East | Glastonbury & Somerton |
| Hitchin | Guildford |
| Isle of Wight West | Henley & Thame |
| Milton Keynes Central | Honiton & Sidmouth |
| Milton Keynes North | Horsham |
| Portsmouth North | Lewes |
| Reading West & Mid-Berkshire | Maidenhead |
| Rochester and Strood | Melksham and Devizes |
| Somerset North | Mid Sussex |
| Somerset North East & Hanham | Newbury |
| Southampton Itchen | Newton Abbot |
| St Austell & Newquay | South Cotswolds |
| Stevenage | St Ives |
| Stroud | St Neots & Mid-Cambridgeshire |
| Swindon North | Stratford-on-Avon |
| Swindon South | Taunton & Wellington |
| Truro & Falmouth | Tiverton & Minehead |
| Welwyn Hatfield | Torbay |
| Weston-Super-Mare | Tunbridge Wells |
| Worcester | Wells & Mendip Hills |
| Worthing East & Shoreham | Winchester |
| Worthing West | Woking |
| Wycombe | Yeovil |
Table 1: Examples of Labour and Liberal Democrats gains from the Conservatives in southern England
Some of these results are remarkable, such as Labour’s victories in Worthing East & Shoreham, and Worthing West, both of which had historically been rock-solid Conservative seats with a large elderly population, but which have recently witnessed an influx of younger professionals and ‘creatives’ who have been priced-out of nearby Brighton, or/and are working from home, and therefore do not need live in or very near London. A similar demographic shift also partly accounts for Labour’s remarkable victory in towns like Weston-Super-Mare.
However, the natural jubilation of Labour and the Liberal Democrats at their considerable electoral successes in southern England needed to be tempered by two caveats. First, in some of the above seats, victory was achieved with only a small increase in votes compared to 2019. Indeed, in a few seats, the victorious Labour or Liberal Democrat candidate actually polled fewer votes than in 2019, but still won because the Conservative vote fell even more. Such are the vagaries of the First Past the Post electoral system.
The second important caveat is that both Labour and the Liberal Democrats benefitted from the defection of many Conservative voters to Reform UK. For example, in Eastleigh, the Liberal Democrats beat the Conservatives by just 1,500 votes, but the Reform UK challenger polled just over 6,000 votes. In other words, if – and it is obviously pure speculation – Reform UK had not contested this seat, and most of their votes had instead been cast for the Conservative candidate, the latter would probably have won this seat.
The Blue Wall in southern England has indeed crumbled, with the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats making unprecedented gains, and in some instances winning erstwhile Conservative seats for the first time. Obviously, several factors contributed to this transformation, such as simple disillusion or disgust with the Conservatives, the renewal of the Labour Party under Sir Keir Starmer, and changing demographics in some constituencies, as an influx of younger professionals and ‘creatives, often working-from-home and thus enjoying more flexibility in where they live, has rendered some former Conservative-voting towns more ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’, both culturally and politically. However, the intervention of Reform UK also played a significant, and unforeseen, role, in weakening the Conservatives’ former hegemony in much of Southern England.
