The Campaign Company specialises in social research and behaviour change. This is your guide to what we’ve been reading. Here’s what’s coming up this week:
This is a politics week, and we look at a new analysis of party allegiances and English identity. Why do those who feel English behave differently at the ballot box to those who see themselves as British? NB: National identity and voting behaviour is a topic we’re sure will be revisited given the Rutherglen and Hamilton West by-election result.
And of course, there’s Charlie’s Attic, the ringing till for our nation of shopkeepers. This week we glance fondly into the rear-view mirror, to the 1975 craze for pet rocks.
The English and the British
We were intrigued by this recent Tweet, from friend of TCC John Denham. It shows that voters who identify as English have increasingly moved towards the Conservatives, whereas those who say they’re British have maintained their Labour allegiances – or, at least, have remained split between the two main parties.
The difference is such, John points out, that Jeremy Corbyn won among British-identifying voters in Labour’s 2019 defeat, despite being heavily beaten among the English-identifying electorate.
The chart below is from a longer academic study, and comes in a week that saw a major by-election in Rutherglen and Hamilton West. Labour’s win represents a huge step change and it will be interesting to review it through the lens of “national identity” in times to come.
John’s findings did, however, reveal a fascinating trend, over the past two decades – and one which relates directly to questions about Scotland and the Union. A noticeable element of the charts above, after all, is the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. According to the analysis, 2015 was the election year after which Englishness became a major predictor of voting behaviour.
Was this, perhaps, due to the widespread Scottish hankering for self-determination a year before? Did this give English voters a taste for their own version of independence? Or was it that British identity, once the go-to for patriots and nationalists alike, attained a Unionist or even pro-EU tinge – thus Englishness became the ‘full fat’ version.
Whatever the answer, it is clear that the idea of Englishness is both a fairly new phenomenon – at least in terms of its electoral implications – and one which carries serious emotional weight. Charting a path forward for the Union will rely on engaging with this.
And finally this week, Charlie’s Attic, the part of this socio-political battlefield that remains forever England:
