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Brexit was obviously the trigger for that change, but there's been a deep-seated dog-eat-dog mindset, mostly in men, for ages and ages. Macho individualists with a chip on the shoulder fit in very will with Conservative ideology.
Yeah it was fomenting for a while before the Brexit vote, for example UKIP and the BNP's combined vote in the 2009 European Elections was greater than Labour's. For me that election was the tipping point.
Prole.
I was born in Middlesborough and lived in the Sunderland-Durham borderlands until I was 18, so sort of close to some of these areas. I wasn't in the slightest surprised about parts of the 'red wall' turning blue, and got a few eye rolls from a typical Labour supporter at work in London for suggesting it was a risk years before it happened. Brexit was obviously the trigger for that change, but there's been a deep-seated dog-eat-dog mindset, mostly in men, for ages and ages. Macho individualists with a chip on the shoulder fit in very well with Conservative ideology.
The political scars from the 80s are just too far away, and many under the age of about 65–70 simply don't give a shit about it — growing up there it basically just wasn't mentioned, or if it was it was taking the piss out of the couple of call centres created after industry left. Blaming councils for everything also seems to be a past time.
All anecdotal obviously, and I'm sure there are loads of places like this, but yeah…