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| ‘We felt something remarkable happening’: why a red tide rose on banks of the Thames | ‘We felt something remarkable happening’: why a red tide rose on banks of the Thames |
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| In another long weekend of electoral anarchy of the kind that the Tories seem keen to establish as a regular date in the British summer season, between Ascot and Wimbledon, there were no more startling gatecrashings than Labour’s march back into the Conservative heartland. The south-eastern constituencies from which Blair built his 1997 landslide had seemed beyond the scope of Corbyn’s Labour. But just as the Tories found new unlikely resonance in Scotland, so Labour’s victorious defeat was embellished with swings and scalps out of the blue. | In another long weekend of electoral anarchy of the kind that the Tories seem keen to establish as a regular date in the British summer season, between Ascot and Wimbledon, there were no more startling gatecrashings than Labour’s march back into the Conservative heartland. The south-eastern constituencies from which Blair built his 1997 landslide had seemed beyond the scope of Corbyn’s Labour. But just as the Tories found new unlikely resonance in Scotland, so Labour’s victorious defeat was embellished with swings and scalps out of the blue. |
| The headline acts were the establishment of the People’s Republic of Kensington and the taking of Canterbury, that well-known seat of Marxist revisionism. But other shifts in the natural order were just as remarkable. Some resulted in dangerously narrowed Tory majorities, others were outright Labour successes. Brighton Kemptown went to Labour, and so did Reading East. The latter, a constituency which snakes out a tongue into Maidenhead, the prime minister’s patch, and which squats above John Redwood’s Wokingham, was no doubt a source of particular joy. | The headline acts were the establishment of the People’s Republic of Kensington and the taking of Canterbury, that well-known seat of Marxist revisionism. But other shifts in the natural order were just as remarkable. Some resulted in dangerously narrowed Tory majorities, others were outright Labour successes. Brighton Kemptown went to Labour, and so did Reading East. The latter, a constituency which snakes out a tongue into Maidenhead, the prime minister’s patch, and which squats above John Redwood’s Wokingham, was no doubt a source of particular joy. |
| Theresa May’s house in Sonning lies right on the border of Reading East, ensuring that as she contemplates strong and stable might-have-beens on her patio, the sun will be setting red. Matt Rodda, a local councillor and former journalist, turned over a Tory majority of 7,000 in 2015 with a 16% swing. A day later, having not slept a wink, Rodda was still pinching himself. | Theresa May’s house in Sonning lies right on the border of Reading East, ensuring that as she contemplates strong and stable might-have-beens on her patio, the sun will be setting red. Matt Rodda, a local councillor and former journalist, turned over a Tory majority of 7,000 in 2015 with a 16% swing. A day later, having not slept a wink, Rodda was still pinching himself. |
| “I thought we would get close,” he says, “and lose narrowly. It was only on the day itself that we felt something remarkable happening.” There was a symbolism in the MP he defeated. Rob Wilson had been the minister for civil society for both Cameron and May, responsible for the “big society” agenda (remember that?): “social action, social enterprise and social investment”. In Reading East in the last six weeks, all of the social action seems to have been on his opponents’ side. How that happened, and why it happened, is instructive in how Labour overturned the odds on Thursday. | “I thought we would get close,” he says, “and lose narrowly. It was only on the day itself that we felt something remarkable happening.” There was a symbolism in the MP he defeated. Rob Wilson had been the minister for civil society for both Cameron and May, responsible for the “big society” agenda (remember that?): “social action, social enterprise and social investment”. In Reading East in the last six weeks, all of the social action seems to have been on his opponents’ side. How that happened, and why it happened, is instructive in how Labour overturned the odds on Thursday. |
| Reading is divided in two for parliamentary purposes and Reading East is further divided between the young, diverse wards of the town centre and the commuter hinterland of rural Berkshire. The town is relatively prosperous, with hi-tech and blue-chip employers – Microsoft, Prudential, Huawei. The demographics have meant in the past two elections that the Tories have won the seat comfortably. Nothing changed in their support. In fact, Wilson, the incumbent, slightly improved on the number of votes he received in 2015 (as did the sitting Tory MPs in Kensington and Brighton Kemptown and Canterbury). Labour’s Rodda, however, in a pattern also matched in those other Labour gains, spectacularly increased his numbers by 10,000, adding more than a third to his count. | Reading is divided in two for parliamentary purposes and Reading East is further divided between the young, diverse wards of the town centre and the commuter hinterland of rural Berkshire. The town is relatively prosperous, with hi-tech and blue-chip employers – Microsoft, Prudential, Huawei. The demographics have meant in the past two elections that the Tories have won the seat comfortably. Nothing changed in their support. In fact, Wilson, the incumbent, slightly improved on the number of votes he received in 2015 (as did the sitting Tory MPs in Kensington and Brighton Kemptown and Canterbury). Labour’s Rodda, however, in a pattern also matched in those other Labour gains, spectacularly increased his numbers by 10,000, adding more than a third to his count. |
| Where did these votes, the votes that have, by extension, hung the parliament, come from? In Reading East you can trace them back two years. Jeremy Corbyn’s first speech to conference announced a strategy that reached out not to the voters most commentators believed he should be competing for – those who had, since 1997, swung from Labour to the Tories in successive elections – but rather to people not previously engaged or lost to party politics. “Young people and older people are fizzing with ideas … Labour can be the place where people come together to campaign.” Conventional wisdom suggested that he was preaching only to the converted of the left. In Reading East, at least, he proved that wrong. | Where did these votes, the votes that have, by extension, hung the parliament, come from? In Reading East you can trace them back two years. Jeremy Corbyn’s first speech to conference announced a strategy that reached out not to the voters most commentators believed he should be competing for – those who had, since 1997, swung from Labour to the Tories in successive elections – but rather to people not previously engaged or lost to party politics. “Young people and older people are fizzing with ideas … Labour can be the place where people come together to campaign.” Conventional wisdom suggested that he was preaching only to the converted of the left. In Reading East, at least, he proved that wrong. |
| Even the most ardent of Labour activists in the constituency thought that when Theresa May called her election they were travelling “very much more in hope than expectation” – as Tony Jones, a councillor in the Redlands ward, which includes the university and the Royal Berkshire hospital, told me on Friday. But over the course of the campaign that balance changed. The first shift was the Labour manifesto. The Labour group in Reading were not all supporters of Corbyn’s project, but the manifesto was something they could all honestly get behind. It “played brilliantly,” Rodda says, to local concerns about affordable housing and the effects of austerity on public services. As Jan Gavin, Jones’s fellow councillor, observes, “very quickly the factions of the party came together around the manifesto. We just cracked on with it.” | Even the most ardent of Labour activists in the constituency thought that when Theresa May called her election they were travelling “very much more in hope than expectation” – as Tony Jones, a councillor in the Redlands ward, which includes the university and the Royal Berkshire hospital, told me on Friday. But over the course of the campaign that balance changed. The first shift was the Labour manifesto. The Labour group in Reading were not all supporters of Corbyn’s project, but the manifesto was something they could all honestly get behind. It “played brilliantly,” Rodda says, to local concerns about affordable housing and the effects of austerity on public services. As Jan Gavin, Jones’s fellow councillor, observes, “very quickly the factions of the party came together around the manifesto. We just cracked on with it.” |
| The second milestone that the activists I spoke to identified was the fact that Corbyn appeared in their midst. In the course of his campaigning, it was unusual for the leader to address crowds in relatively safe Tory seats (Reading East was 67th on Labour’s hit list). While Theresa May, bizarrely, took her campaign to hermetically sealed hangars in Labour marginals – as if her mere presence in the vicinity would sway the vote – Corbyn mainly concentrated on home turf and used images of big crowds on social media to energise his support. He spoke at Reading on a Wednesday morning with only a few hours’ notice. | The second milestone that the activists I spoke to identified was the fact that Corbyn appeared in their midst. In the course of his campaigning, it was unusual for the leader to address crowds in relatively safe Tory seats (Reading East was 67th on Labour’s hit list). While Theresa May, bizarrely, took her campaign to hermetically sealed hangars in Labour marginals – as if her mere presence in the vicinity would sway the vote – Corbyn mainly concentrated on home turf and used images of big crowds on social media to energise his support. He spoke at Reading on a Wednesday morning with only a few hours’ notice. |
| The mythology was part of the effect. Some activists I spoke to put the crowd at 2,000, some at 3,000 or more, but all suggested that it was an electrifying kind of event (particularly for a Wednesday morning in Reading). Corbyn used the car park generally employed for the Reading festival “and the atmosphere walking out there was similar”, Jones suggests. | The mythology was part of the effect. Some activists I spoke to put the crowd at 2,000, some at 3,000 or more, but all suggested that it was an electrifying kind of event (particularly for a Wednesday morning in Reading). Corbyn used the car park generally employed for the Reading festival “and the atmosphere walking out there was similar”, Jones suggests. |
| Lydia Bowyer, a local press photographer, describes the event as “biblical”. She took her camera and got pictures of people hanging out of trees to get a glimpse of the man. Bowyer is from Leeds and she always felt the people of Reading were a “bit too polite to protest”. But now here there were “black, white, gay, straight, young old”. The New York Daily News covered the event and compared it to some of the rallies for Bernie Sanders. It found Green party members who had been converted, students who were organising messianically. | |
| Corbyn’s “warm-up man” was, in effect, Noam Chomsky, who had spoken to a similarly enthused group a few weeks before in a guest lecture at Reading University. The prophet of the intellectual left made the argument that voters had turned to the Conservatives in recent years because of “an absence of anything else”. Corbyn’s movement politics offered a real alternative, he suggested. Such endorsements, along with the “authenticity” of Corbyn’s rally, allowed that constituency of what Jones calls “aspirational liberals who might have flirted with the Greens and Lib Dems at recent elections” to feel comfortable again with Labour. | Corbyn’s “warm-up man” was, in effect, Noam Chomsky, who had spoken to a similarly enthused group a few weeks before in a guest lecture at Reading University. The prophet of the intellectual left made the argument that voters had turned to the Conservatives in recent years because of “an absence of anything else”. Corbyn’s movement politics offered a real alternative, he suggested. Such endorsements, along with the “authenticity” of Corbyn’s rally, allowed that constituency of what Jones calls “aspirational liberals who might have flirted with the Greens and Lib Dems at recent elections” to feel comfortable again with Labour. |
| Despite the negativity of the press towards Corbyn, his appearance on the stump cemented a view of a man prepared to stand up for what he believed in. On the doorstep, even among those ready to be sympathetic to her in her neighbouring constituency, that contrasted with the prime minister, whose credibility “was being shredded day by day”. | Despite the negativity of the press towards Corbyn, his appearance on the stump cemented a view of a man prepared to stand up for what he believed in. On the doorstep, even among those ready to be sympathetic to her in her neighbouring constituency, that contrasted with the prime minister, whose credibility “was being shredded day by day”. |
| The received wisdom of electioneering in the Blair years was that it is a battle for Middle England. For the 2005 election I went on a journalistic pilgrimage in search of that mythical place. The nominal El Dorado of that quest was the Oracle shopping centre in Reading, based on the fact that when Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail and self-appointed Godfather of Middle England, was unsure of an editorial message he was in the habit of asking hacks: “And what would a housewife in Reading think?” | The received wisdom of electioneering in the Blair years was that it is a battle for Middle England. For the 2005 election I went on a journalistic pilgrimage in search of that mythical place. The nominal El Dorado of that quest was the Oracle shopping centre in Reading, based on the fact that when Paul Dacre, editor of the Daily Mail and self-appointed Godfather of Middle England, was unsure of an editorial message he was in the habit of asking hacks: “And what would a housewife in Reading think?” |
| I am not sure how many of the housewives that Dacre had in mind survived the 1950s, but it is fair to say that when presented with the ideas in the abject Tory manifesto of 2017, even that remnant did not think much of them. In Reading East this was expressed in different ways. Wilson had styled himself as a champion of Reading schools, but the fact of £6m in cuts made his rhetoric absurd. In the weeks leading up to the election, the local papers reported how one school had sent begging letters to parents “asking for £1 a day” for essential equipment. | I am not sure how many of the housewives that Dacre had in mind survived the 1950s, but it is fair to say that when presented with the ideas in the abject Tory manifesto of 2017, even that remnant did not think much of them. In Reading East this was expressed in different ways. Wilson had styled himself as a champion of Reading schools, but the fact of £6m in cuts made his rhetoric absurd. In the weeks leading up to the election, the local papers reported how one school had sent begging letters to parents “asking for £1 a day” for essential equipment. |
| The “dementia tax” further eroded any faith that swing voters might have felt in May’s project. Electra Colios, a teacher and Labour activist in her mid-60s, recalls how she spoke to one man who had a Tory poster in the window that he had doctored in anger to read: “Vote Conservative: lose your child’s inheritance…” There was “real rage from just about everybody” about the policy, Jones recalls. | The “dementia tax” further eroded any faith that swing voters might have felt in May’s project. Electra Colios, a teacher and Labour activist in her mid-60s, recalls how she spoke to one man who had a Tory poster in the window that he had doctored in anger to read: “Vote Conservative: lose your child’s inheritance…” There was “real rage from just about everybody” about the policy, Jones recalls. |
| The one thing that did not come up very often among voters, it appears, was the question on which the election had ostensibly been called. Reading was a strong Remain town, along with most of the neighbouring constituencies (including May’s and Redwood’s). But door to door, Gavin suggests, it “almost never” came up. If Brexit was in evidence anywhere as an issue, it seems it was in an indirect way. Willow Colios, Electra’s son, was digital manager at Reading students’ union for two years until the end of 2016. Part of his remit was to encourage student voter registration. “People didn’t take it seriously, really, until after the referendum,” he suggests, “because nobody thought that Leave would happen.” What followed wasn’t motivated by a sense of “generational war” exactly, he suggests, “but students certainly saw that if they didn’t vote for their own interests, nobody else would. A lot of people started to register.” | The one thing that did not come up very often among voters, it appears, was the question on which the election had ostensibly been called. Reading was a strong Remain town, along with most of the neighbouring constituencies (including May’s and Redwood’s). But door to door, Gavin suggests, it “almost never” came up. If Brexit was in evidence anywhere as an issue, it seems it was in an indirect way. Willow Colios, Electra’s son, was digital manager at Reading students’ union for two years until the end of 2016. Part of his remit was to encourage student voter registration. “People didn’t take it seriously, really, until after the referendum,” he suggests, “because nobody thought that Leave would happen.” What followed wasn’t motivated by a sense of “generational war” exactly, he suggests, “but students certainly saw that if they didn’t vote for their own interests, nobody else would. A lot of people started to register.” |
| Ben Cooper, president of the students’ union, suggests that this time around it was much easier to get Reading’s 17,000 students involved in the election. The union did a series of events to drive registration, a mock election and a big social-media campaign, and they were helped by Labour’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. “But honestly,” Cooper says, “it was not only about tuition fees. Brexit really made people think about it.” | Ben Cooper, president of the students’ union, suggests that this time around it was much easier to get Reading’s 17,000 students involved in the election. The union did a series of events to drive registration, a mock election and a big social-media campaign, and they were helped by Labour’s pledge to abolish tuition fees. “But honestly,” Cooper says, “it was not only about tuition fees. Brexit really made people think about it.” |
| In his election analysis on the BBC sofa, Eric Pickles referred to Labour’s arguably costed pledge on fees as “pork-belly politics”, suggesting that the student vote had been bought. The precise demographics are not yet available, but anecdotally it appears that in Reading East the mass of late registrations among the young was not confined to students – many young professionals, concerned about housing costs in particular, joined up. But certainly students did sign up in large numbers and mostly voted Labour. | In his election analysis on the BBC sofa, Eric Pickles referred to Labour’s arguably costed pledge on fees as “pork-belly politics”, suggesting that the student vote had been bought. The precise demographics are not yet available, but anecdotally it appears that in Reading East the mass of late registrations among the young was not confined to students – many young professionals, concerned about housing costs in particular, joined up. But certainly students did sign up in large numbers and mostly voted Labour. |
| Observers witnessed something similar in Canterbury (where the student population has grown in recent years to 40,000 in a resident electorate of 110,000). The infectious energy the campaign had created also produced a raft of volunteers (“three times as many as in 2015,” Electra Colios says, “young and old, some returning Labour voters, some young professionals, like my daughter, a teacher…”). The energy produced the surprise. Jones and Gavin, both activists since the 1980s, had never seen anything like what happened on polling day. “Young people started arriving in groups of 10 and 20 to vote, queueing, having a good time, after about seven o’clock and until the polls closed at 10.” Willow Colios notes that May was “incredibly naive” in the timing of the election, which came after exams but before students had gone home for the holidays. | Observers witnessed something similar in Canterbury (where the student population has grown in recent years to 40,000 in a resident electorate of 110,000). The infectious energy the campaign had created also produced a raft of volunteers (“three times as many as in 2015,” Electra Colios says, “young and old, some returning Labour voters, some young professionals, like my daughter, a teacher…”). The energy produced the surprise. Jones and Gavin, both activists since the 1980s, had never seen anything like what happened on polling day. “Young people started arriving in groups of 10 and 20 to vote, queueing, having a good time, after about seven o’clock and until the polls closed at 10.” Willow Colios notes that May was “incredibly naive” in the timing of the election, which came after exams but before students had gone home for the holidays. |
| The sense is, though, that now they have seen what they can do, they will not be going away. Matt Rodda suggests his victory can be a “real bellwether for what Labour can now achieve again in the south”. Reading East and places like it give credence to Corbyn’s core belief that a movement will always eventually beat a party. “This is Jeremy’s time,” Electra Colios suggests. It certainly felt a bit like that in the sun in Reading on Friday. The summer will tell us how long that moment might last. | The sense is, though, that now they have seen what they can do, they will not be going away. Matt Rodda suggests his victory can be a “real bellwether for what Labour can now achieve again in the south”. Reading East and places like it give credence to Corbyn’s core belief that a movement will always eventually beat a party. “This is Jeremy’s time,” Electra Colios suggests. It certainly felt a bit like that in the sun in Reading on Friday. The summer will tell us how long that moment might last. |