Steve Rayson

My bestselling book is now available on Kindle and as a paperback on  Amazon .  Why did thousands of lifelong Labour voters in the party’s heartland seats abandon the party in the 2019 General Election? Simple explanations like ‘Brexit’ and ‘Corbyn’ dramatically underestimate the importance of longer term trends, and the changing public narrative in these communities. This is the story of one of the most remarkable shifts in British politics.

Following the 2016 EU referendum and US presidential election there has been renewed interest in the concept of political narratives and the power of storytelling.  One of the main aims of a political narrative is to shape the public narrative, namely the stories that people share about themselves, their communities, and what needs to be done. The transmission of stories, the political storytelling, is only the first step. The real power of political narratives resides in their retelling.

 From a review of the research, outlined in my book ' The Fall of the Red Wall ', it is clear that for a political narrative to be powerful and influence the public narrative it should:
 Reflect themes and narratives the audience is already familiar with 
 Connect the past and the present with an imagined future
 Align with the audience’s perceptions of reality
 Be capable of being understood, discussed, and retold in everyday language
 Enable the audience to identify with the narrator or th...

Public narratives are the narratives that people share publicly, typically with more than one other person. Each person has their own public narrative, it is the story they share. It is a story they share with others in their own words, their own use of everyday language. The story may be shared in a social setting such as over a drink in a bar or equally in a focus group or in response to a question from a journalist. There will be many different public narratives but within the public sphere some narratives will come to dominate. These narratives, the ones that become familiar and influential, are the narratives repeated the most often. These are the narratives that resonate with people.

The ‘Red Wall’ Concept The ‘red wall’ concept was initially developed during 2019 by Tory pollster James Kanagasooriam , an advisory board member of Onward and a strategy consultant at OC&C. He first mentioned the concept in a tweet of August 2019, as part of a 16 part Twitter thread.

Following the US presidential election of 2016 there has been increased interest amongst political scientists in the concept of political narratives and how storytelling influences how people understand and make sense of the world. Political narrative is both a theoretical concept and also a device used by political strategists to influence how people view their environment, their community and relationships between groups. (Graef et al, 2018). In this post I argue that for a political narrative to be powerful and persuasive it should: Reflect themes and narratives the audience is already familiar with Connect the past and the present with an imagined future Align with the audience’s perceptions of reality Be capable of being understood, discussed and retold in everyday language Enable the audience to identify with the narrator or the story Confirm rather than negate the audience’s sense of collective and individual identity Support the overall narrative arc by combining mu...

The British Election Survey (BES) data 2019 was published at the end of last week.  I was keen to explore the profiles of those voters that switched from Labour to Conservative as many of the 'red wall' seats appear to have involved direct Labour to Conservative switching. For example, in Bassetlaw the swing from Labour to the Conservatives was a record 18%. Such direct switching is unusual, particularly in former Labour heartlands. The BES panel data includes 1077 voters nationally who voted Labour in 2017 and switched to the Conservatives in 2019. This data helps us to build a profile of the people who switched directly between the two main parties.