A ‘Portillo moment’ could happen anywhere

In the countryside and by the sea, far beyond its traditional heartlands, Labour is in the lead.

The tide is turning

England’s coastal communities will be critical to the next election, this time as every one before it. The coast has consistently backed winning causes over the last 40 years. Three-quarters of coastal seats supported Margaret Thatcher in 1987. Ten years later, Tony Blair’s huge majority was built on the back of doubling Labour’s share of these seats. Come 2016, the coast swung behind Brexit. In 2019 coastal voters overwhelmingly backed Boris Johnson.

Now, the tide is turning once more. Our new polling shows nearly half (44%) of those who live within 5 miles of the sea now back Labour. Support for the Conservatives has fallen by 20 points in these areas since 2019, with their vote share falling from 44% to 24% today. Labour has a net favourability amongst these voters of +7. The Tories have slumped to -32.

A new countryside alliance 

While winning the coast may be enough to swing an election, Labour’s advance now reaches further still. 

The traditional wisdom has always been that rural voters back the Conservatives, with the Liberal Democrats offering their stiffest competition there. Now, for the first time since 2001, Labour leads amongst rural voters.

Our polling shows that Labour has, as one advisor told the Daily Telegraph this month, “parked its tanks on the Conservatives’ fields.” Just over a third (34%) of those in villages or rural areas now say they would vote for the Labour party if there was an election tomorrow, compared to just 30% who would choose the Conservatives.

This amounts to a 17-point swing towards the Labour party in the countryside since the 2019 election, reflecting progress towards a pledge made by the Shadow Environment Secretary, Steve Reed, who said in late November that Labour had “become too detached” from rural voters and must win them back

Our green and pleasant land

It’s not only rural voters who take pride in Britain’s countryside. Our polling shows that pride in this green and pleasant land unites all voters. Asked why they feel proud to be British, a quarter (26%) of Britons cite the countryside, behind only our history (29%) and the NHS (44%). Amongst rural voters, the countryside is second only to the NHS.

No longer the party of the countryside

When it comes to the management of rural issues, Labour leads the Conservatives on every count. On every environmental issue we tested, Britons were around twice as likely to say they trusted Labour over the Conservatives. On no issue is the gap greater than sewage, which 35% of Britons trust Labour to handle over the Conservatives. Just 18% trust Sunak’s Government to handle the issue.

Labour’s lead on sewage matters. Sewage is by far the most important rural issue to Britons across the country, with a majority in cities (55%), large (56%) and small (60%) towns, and villages and rural areas (66%) citing it as a top concern. 

A little over four years ago, Boris Johnson entered 10 Downing Street with a raft of Conservative MPs representing seats that had rarely, and sometimes never, sent a Tory to Parliament before. Places etched into Labour history, forever coloured red on electoral maps, had now turned blue: Sedgefield, once the seat of Tony Blair; Bolsover, whose “beast” seemed a permanent fixture on the Labour benches; Rother Valley, Labour since the end of the First World War.

The polling set out in this report should be placed in this context. Four years ago, Labour had lots its heartlands, collapsing to its worst defeat since 1935. Four years on, it has surged back, reaching voters far beyond them. There is, of course, a long way to go between now and the next election. Many voters, across the country, remain undecided. However, Conservative strategists will look at polls like this one with fear. Seats that they could once take for granted, must now be fought tooth-and-nail. The reason? A ‘Portillo moment’ could happen anywhere…

Methodology and data tables
The results above are drawn from two surveys carried out by Labour Together online, the first between the 27th of October and 1st of November 2023, and the second between the 9th and 15th of January 2024. Each sample - of 4981 and 2960 Britons respectively - was weighted to be both nationally and politically representative of all Britons. 

For more information about Labour Together’s polling methodology, please click here

Full data tables for the results included above are available here and here