Labour's rural challenge.
| Author | Cooper, Ben |
| Position | RURAL POLICY AND POLITICS |
Labour has a rural problem. The 2021 local elections saw Labour underperform in rural areas, compared to the rest of the country: Labour's share of the vote was just 23 per cent in wards classed as 'village or smaller', compared to 45 per cent in wards in 'core cities'. (1) But this is just the latest evidence of a longstanding problem.
Since Labour historically underperforms in rural communities, it may be tempting to suggest they and their voters are out of reach, and not a priority for resources. If Labour wants to win an election, you could argue, the party should look elsewhere. But this is wrong: Labour must win rural voters to win the next election; and Labour can win rural voters - with a bit of work.
A history of rural underperformance
Labour currently holds just two out of 124 constituencies in Great Britain that are classified as 'village or smaller' - i.e. where at least a plurality of voters live in what would be classified in the census as 'rural output areas' (Hemsworth and North Durham). (2) It currently holds no seats where a majority of voters live in rural output areas. Just 2 per cent of 'village or smaller' seats have Labour MPs - a historic low, compared to 82 per cent held by the Conservatives, 10 per cent by the SNP, and 3 per cent by Plaid Cymru (see Figure 1). (3) For a party that seeks to represent and govern the whole of Great Britain, representing a smaller share of rural Britain in Parliament than the SNP or Plaid Cymru shows the scale of Labour's current underperformance.
This means that less than 1 per cent of MPs in the 2019 Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) represent rural seats, compared to 28 per cent of the Conservative parliamentary party. Back in 2005, twenty-seven Labour MPs (or 8 per cent of the PLP) represented rural seats. But the proportion of the PLP representing rural seats has decreased in every election since 2005.
Across all 124 rural seats, Labour's vote share is very low. In 2019, Labour won around 50 per cent of the total vote in 'core city' constituencies, both in and outside of London, while securing just 19 per cent of the total vote in rural seats. Looking at all seats in Great Britain, we can see that the more rural a constituency, the lower Labour's vote share was in 2019 (see Figure 2).
Labour's performance in rural seats relative to its national (Great Britain) vote share is very poor: there was a 14 percentage point gap between the party's national vote and its rural vote in 2019. And this isn't just a feature of the latest election (Labour's worst election defeat since 1935). Labour's performance in rural constituencies has been poor for a long time and has worsened since 2010 (see Figure 3). Despite gaining thirty seats and increasing its vote share by 9.9 per cent in the 2017 election, Labour's underperformance in rural areas increased by around 2 percentage points compared to 2015. Even as the party was seeing relative success across Great Britain, it wasn't seeing similar gains in rural areas.
Following the 2017 election, a Fabian Society report, Labour Country, warned that 'despite Labour's strong performance... it risks becoming electorally and culturally adrift in rural areas'. (4) Since then, things have only got worse.
Labour's underperformance...
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