Rebuilding the Red Wall
Just after the 2019 British General Election, Mr Andrew Beattie, School archivist, author and regular contributor to the Scholarship Programme, delivered a lecture to the students about how Boris Johnson had demolished the “Red Wall” – a reference to the cluster of Labour seats in the North of England that changed hands to assure his victory. Now, in the aftermath of the 2024 election occurring on the last day of last term, he spoke to members of the Year 10 Athenaeum on the topic of how Keir Starmer had rebuilt that wall.
Making extensive use of electoral maps, Mr Beattie skilfully unpacked firstly how our General Election system worked, and then recapped what had happened in 2019 and why. He explained how maps can sometimes mislead, given the varying densities of population across the country, and so some huge swathes of blue in the North of England may represent only a few rural constituencies.
Given the enormous Labour landslide, but also the revival of the Liberal Democrats and the losses suffered by the SNP, Mr Beattie was making full use of the colour palette! The time he spent examining the areas of the UK other than England was also particularly informative. Whilst offering analysis for the recent General Election, he was careful not to make too many assumptions about the possible electoral map when the Year 10 students will themselves be voting in 4-5 years’ time.
This excellent survey of political geography ended, as it had to, with a brief look at the USA and their Electoral College system. It would be a brave person to call that one!
