British election: Tories’ target audience turns from red to blue

He was a rugby league supporter, male, white, older and northern. He was the Workington Man — the poster boy for middle England whom the Conservative Party targeted as the type of voter to win over as central to winning a majority government.

Workington Man voted Brexit in the referendum and felt his views were not being represented by Labour. Blue-collar and hardworking in the steelmaking town, he was worried about jobs.

When Workington Man was announced, there was an immediate outcry that the area was being stereotyped and locals were ­offended at the cliches about not having university degrees. And what about Workington woman?

Yet in the election, Workington Man picked up the football, swerved the timid Labour defence to score under the posts at the blue end, the first time in 98 years.

It has been a barnstorming ­result by any measure.

The Conservatives won Workington by more than 4000 votes with an increase of 7.6 per cent, while the Labour vote collapsed.

Voters were furious at Jeremy Corbyn’s confused Brexit position, and his support for the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah was seen as a security issue. The first indication of the blue landslide came in the third seat to be declared: Blyth Valley in Northumberland, which fell to the Conservatives for the first time since 1950. The shocked Tory winner, Ian Levy, said: “I’m going to be on that train on Monday, I’m going to London, we’re going to get Brexit done.”

The result was mirrored across middle England’s Brexit-supporting heartlands. Mining towns, poor welfare-laden villages, steel- working centres — which had been voting Labour for generations — have dramatically turned in huge numbers.

Was it just Brexit or the fear of Corbyn’s high tax regime and Santa sack of promises that were too good to be true that swung their vote? Most feared Corbyn’s manifesto more than they feared Brexit. And in the seats that had voted Leave in the referendum by more than 55 per cent, nearly all swung across to Boris Johnson, who had campaigned almost exclusively in the Midlands and the north. While the Conservative vote share increased a small 1.2 per cent to 43.5 per cent, it was the collapse of Labour by nearly 8 per cent to 32.4 per cent vote share that brought about its demise.

Labour was immediately conflicted about the cause of its ­humiliation.

Much of the northeast of ­England was lost to Labour. Seats such as Tony Blair’s old constituency of Sedgefield fell with a 10,000 vote turnaround, and ­Bishop Auckland, which had been solid Labour for 134 years, voted in the Conservative candidate with a near 8000 margin.

Labour’s Brexit spokeswoman, Jenny Chapman, lost her Darlington seat, which had been held by Labour for 27 years, to the Conservatives. Bolsover, held by 87-year-old Labour stalwart Dennis Skinner for 47 years, succumbed too on the back of the Brexit issue.

Johnson was ­reported to have joked to his workers at the Conservative Party headquarters that the seat of Redcar has turned ­Bluecar.

Incredibly, the Tories even picked up the Manchester seat of Leigh, which has been in Labour hands since 1922.

The Welsh electorate of Wrexham had been a safe Labour seat for 84 years until now. The last time the Conservatives have won so comprehensively in Wales was in 1859, two years before Abraham Lincoln became US president, but this time the Tories won five Welsh seats.

And to underscore the truly ground-shifting results, a potential Labour leader, Laura Pidcock, lost her seat, meaning next year’s Durham Miners’ Gala will be held in a Tory constituency.