Since the reshuffle in No.10, there has been a lot of talk about whether the PM should choose between his new Northern spoils or his Southern heartlands.

Today, @ukonward publishes "No Turning Back", a detailed look at the parties' new voting coalitions. A few highlights:

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1. There has been a lot of sorting in the electorate over the last few elections, driven by Brexit and the realignment of British politics away from old divisions of class towards a values divide on culture and age.

This is from the 2015 result to the start of the 2019 campaign
2. There was further sorting during the 2019 campaign itself.

This is from the start to the end of the campaign. The Tories converted 71% of Brexit Party supporters during the campaign and 35% of DKs and WNVs. 6% of Lib Dem voters switched to Labour.
3. As a result, the two main parties have fundamentally different coalitions to five or ten years ago.

The Tories are more provincial, working class, regionally distributed. Labour are more metropolitan, middle class and urban.
4. It is also hard to overstate how different geography of the Conservative Party is to recent decades.

This is the 2019 party against the party after its 1997 defeat. The Conservatives now represent 57% of seats in the North and Midlands, their highest share since 1935.
5. As the PM made clear, many voters "lent" their votes.

1 in 5 Tory voters - 3.2 million people - were "contract voters", where they backed a party other than their ideal party to deliver an outcome (mostly Brexit). Without these voters, the majority would have been 42, not 80
6. The majority is thus more vulnerable than it first appears. But it can be strengthened - because Red Wall voters share many of the same values as loyal Tories.

The Tories are no longer the party of Notting Hill. But they can unite North West Durham with North Swindon.
7. Labour is much less homogenous. 27% of the party's 2019 voters are strongly the left of centre on both economic and social issues.

The current values coalition could only ever delivers 37% of the electorate. Keir Starmer will need to move right on economics and culture.
8. All of this means that there can be "No Turning Back" for the Conservatives if they want to retain a majority. They must deliver on Brexit and levelling up.

And there must be a significant rightward pivot from Labour if they want to get back into contention in 2024.
9. In the longer term, however, the Conservatives faces a growing challenge among the young.

In 2019, the gap between the oldest and youngest voters widened to more than 80 percentage points. Only 1 in 3 voters aged 18-24 years old would consider voting Conservative.
10. You can read the full report here: https://t.co/QDPFly5JEP

Please share, comment, challenge. The next election is few years away, but there's a lot of work to do for both main parties.

Thanks to @HanburyStrategy, @guymiscampbell and @jim_blagden for all their hard work.
So our website has helpfully gone down. DM me your email and I'll send you a PDF.

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I should mention, this is why I keep talking about this. Because I know so many people who legally CAN'T.

How do I know they have NDAs, if they can't talk legally about them? Because they trusted me with their secrets... after I said something. That's how they knew I was safe.


Some of the people who have reached out to me privately have been sitting with the pain of what happened to them and the regret that they signed for YEARS. But at the time, it didn't seem like they had any other option BUT to sign.

I do not blame *anyone* for signing an NDA, especially when it's attached to a financial lifeline. When you feel like your family's wellbeing is at stake, you'll do anything -- even sign away your own voice -- to provide for them. That's not a "choice"; that's survival.

And yes, many of the people whose stories I now know were pressured into signing an NDA by my husband's ex-employer. Some of whom I *never* would have guessed. People I thought "left well." Turns out, they've just been *very* good at abiding by the terms of their NDA.

(And others who have reached out had similar experiences with other Christian orgs. Turns out abuse, and the use of NDAs to cover up that abuse, is rampant in a LOT of places.)

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