Britain's towns key in the battle for Number 10
Scotland and towns in England and Wales are key battle grounds for political parties seeking a majority in the next election.
Sunday 28 October 2018 13:55, UK
Aside from the brief interlude of 2015 to 2017, the last party leader to deliver a decisive victory and stable majority at a general election was Tony Blair in 2005. Remember him?
Research by Sky News and the Centre for Towns suggests the path to power at the next election runs through Scotland and the towns of England and Wales.
The people who live in these towns tend to be older, were more likely to have voted leave in the EU referendum, and have little trust in politics.
Arguably, they are the communities that Theresa May said had been "left behind".
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Now - thanks to the way the UKIP vote split in 2017 - town-focused constituencies have become a key Labour-Conservative battleground.
At the 2017 election, Labour won close to 60% of the vote in the major cities of England, while the Conservatives secured around 50% in small towns.
The swing to Labour from the Conservatives was over 5% in cities, but just 2% in towns.
This pattern reflects a long-term trend in voting - over the past 40 years Labour has strengthened in cities (in 2017 gaining seats like Battersea, Croydon Central and Kensington) and the Conservatives have made gains in towns (in places like Mansfield, Middlesbrough and Walsall).
These dynamics are being driven by demographic changes that have seen the populations of towns getting older, while cities have become younger and more diverse.
We are left with an electoral map where of the top 100 marginal seats in England and Wales (where the Conservatives and Labour are within 10 points of one another), 62 are constituencies mainly located in a town, while just 14 are in cities.
The vast majority of those city seats are in London.
The rise of the SNP in Scotland is another reason why it is so difficult for either the Conservatives or Labour to form a majority.
Nicola Sturgeon's relative stranglehold north of the border is a particular problem for Labour, which was once by far the dominant force there.
When Tony Blair took power in 1997, Labour won 56 out of the 72 seats available in Scotland. Today, the party has slipped into third place, behind the Tories, with just seven seats.
However, 46 constituencies in Scotland can be considered marginal at the next election and Labour is in second place in 22 of them. Gaining all of those would give Jeremy Corbyn a third of gains he needs to get to Number 10.
The signs are that, in England and Wales at least, this new electoral reality slowly seems to be dawning on both the main parties.
Labour's recent party broadcast "Our Town" focused on the economic decline felt by former industrial towns over many decades, while the shadow chancellor John McDonnell is touring Britain's towns to pitch the party's economic message.
The challenge for Labour is to cut through voters's suspicions of the party's values and its leader.
The party needs to win back voters in seats like Southampton Itchen, Stoke-on-Trent South and Telford to have a chance of forming the next government.
To achieve this it also needs to balance the Remain sympathies of its city supporters with the Brexit support in the towns.
For the Conservatives to continue to make advances in towns requires it to successfully oversee a Brexit that delivers on the promises of the referendum campaign and the 2017 general election.
The electoral ambition of Theresa May's "burning injustices" speech on the steps of 10 Downing Street has long since faded, but for the party to win a parliamentary majority it will need to pick up seats like Keighley, Ashfield and Dudley North.
The final Brexit deal, or "no-deal", and its fallout may determine which party fares best in towns at the next general election.
If Theresa May can negotiate a good deal and oversee a smooth transition, the Conservatives' support in towns may be buoyed.
But if Brexit negotiations hit choppy waters or if 29 March 2019 sees disruption across the country and markets in a state of panic, the voters of Britain's towns may yet turn to Corbyn's Labour.
Will Jennings is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Southampton
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