Britain is not due a General Election until 2024 but I’m not too sure that the Tories can hang on to those Northern seats that helped them win an 80 seat majority in December 2019. The Government has woefully mishandled the covid situation and have brought in policies that although failing and failed, have given the impression that the government is punishing the North both socially and economically. I’ve not seen this attitude towards a Tory government since the high days of the Thatcher years and it really does not look good for the Tories next time around.

Voters in the former Red Wall seats that were once Labour for generation after generation, realised that Labour was not on the side of those living in these constituencies. Labour have become a Metro-Left, middle class, very pro-Islam party that eventually turned off voters in seats that Labour had traditionally held onto. These voters broke the habit of generations and voted Conservative because they thought that the Tories would deal with the problems that most concerned them such as protecting the economy and dealing with excessive immigration as well as getting Brexit done. The Tories have obviously failed to deliver on at least two of these electoral desires and I believe that voters will be wary of voting Tory again next time. I’m not in one of the Red Wall seats but even I’m not going to vote Tory next time so I can imagine that this feeling is even stronger in the Red Wall seats.

So let’s get the political crystal ball out and make some speculative attempts to consider what might happen in the future in these former Labour seats? One possibility is that voters slump back into habit and go back to Labour. This is not an ‘out there’ possibility as there must be an awful lot of voters in these seats regretting voting Tory at the moment as they’ve seen a party that was seen as economically competent, shut down nearly all economic activity in their areas. This current disaster is going to be remembered, even if the Tories managed to pull of a decent Brexit. It’s going to stick in the minds of Northern voters like nothing else since the Miners Strike.

I predict that some of the former Red Wall seats will go back to Labour for a combination of reasons such as disgust by the voters at the Tories, communal and fraudulent postal votes and voter apathy. However this situation is not fated to happen. The former Red Wall seats captured by the Tories could be an opportunity for two of the new liberty focussed parties such as Heritage and Reclaim. These parties could present themselves as what they are, which is credible alternatives to both Tories and Labour. ‘A plague on both your houses’ choice could hurt the Big Two in some former Red Wall seats.

For me, my preferred outcome for the next General Election in the Northern and Red Wall seats would be for Heritage and Reclaim to take seats from both Tories and Labour. This is because both of the current Big Two parties have let down those who live in these seats tremendously. Labour have damaged these areas culturally and socially whilst the Tories have decimated these areas economically.

Because of the complete and utter cock ups in representing the voters of many of these Red Wall seats and other marginal seats elsewhere in the country, by both Tories and Labour, there is an opportunity for the sort of political change that will bring real and honest representation to the residents of these areas. However, this must be worked for now, not one month before the next locals next year nor in the year prior to the next General Election. As I said in a previous article on October 5^th about these new parties, a ground game to build support for the new parties of Heritage and Reclaim needs to be created now. I would suggest that these ‘new Tory ‘ or former Red Wall seats should be some of the first targeted by Reclaim and Heritage. It would be a fertile and maybe receptive market for an alternative to the parties that have mismanaged these areas and the country for too long.

If these new parties do take up the potential opportunities given to them by the mismanagement of the covid situation and the economy by the Tories and the destructive middle class Metro-leftism of Labour, then they could do well. Even if they are stymied in some seats by the First Past The Post electoral system, there is the strong possibility that both Reclaim and Heritage could damage the Big Two electorally, if they put the effort in early enough.

The only fly in the ointment for Reclaim and Heritage that I can see coming in the future is a potential rejuvenation of the Liberal Democrats. Their performance during the lockdown bollocks has been better than I would have expected. They have stood up against Boris Johnson’s authoritarianism far better than many so-called ‘Tory rebels’ have managed to do. If the Liberal Democrats can reform themselves away from a Metro-left grouping, obsessed with identity politics and hostile to the people’s will on Brexit, then they could become the repository of many votes. If the Liberal Democrats publicly, explicitly and in policies and policy documents, dumped all that has made them unelectable and unpalatable for many, then they could be a political force to be reckoned with. But a lot depends on whether the Liberal Democrats truly embrace classical liberalism and democracy with all that these terms contain. Will stepping away from being identity politics and Metro-leftism be too much for both the members and the officers of the Lib Dems, is for me a big question?

To conclude: Both Labour and Tories have damaged their own reputations in seats that they both need to win in order to govern. This reputational damage does provide opportunities for Reclaim and Heritage in seats that were not expected to change hands at the last General Election and this damage also provides a potential opportunity for the Lib Dems should they go down the route of party policy reform. Which party will best exploit this new opportunity is hard to tell at this stage but it is an opportunity that should not be passed up by those who wish to challenge those parties that have misgoverned us for far too long.