Book of the week: Broken Heartlands by Sebastian Payne

An ‘engrossing, warm and insightful’ guide to Labour’s evisceration in its traditional heartlands

Boris Johnson poses with workers during a visit to Wilton Engineering Services
Boris Johnson poses with workers during a visit to Wilton Engineering Services as part of his general election campaign, pictured in November 2019 in Middlesbrough, England
(Image credit: Frank Augstein - WPA Pool/Getty Images)

The collapse in the 2019 general election of the “red wall” – Labour’s bulwark of historically safe seats across the Midlands and the north of England – “was a pivotal moment in British political history”, said Julian Coman in The Observer.

Not only did it hand Boris Johnson an 80-seat majority, but it “plunged Labour into an existential crisis from which it has yet to emerge”. For if the party could no longer appeal to the “kind of people it was set up to fight for”, what hope did it ever have of regaining power?

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