'Tories have £15m debt'

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Tories used to win a third of the working class vote and held seats in Sunderland (you're eyesite is fine), Liverpool (they actually had a majority of L'pool seats until 1964), the northern (ie: working class) end of Manchester... etc, etc.
They held Hartlepool until 1964 and it was marginal for years afterwards (in the recent by-election there, they came FOURTH).

The collapse of working class Toryism is one of the most unreported trends of the last 30 odd years.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The collapse of working class Toryism is one of the most unreported trends of the last 30 odd years.

It seems to me that the Tories and Repubs are on opposite tracks.  Whereas, the Tories are losing favo(u)r with the working class, the Republcans have been picking up a sizeable portion of it.  The Tories need to find a wedge issue;)

The wedge issue trick probably won't work as well here because there's only one office voted for in general elections (M.P's).

A predominantly working class area in the U.S where wedge issues (in this case abortion) have worked well for Republican Presidential candidates is SW Pennsylvania, where they've slowly made large inroads since the late '80's.
But this hasn't rubbed off down ticket... the area still sends Democrats to Harrisburg by lopsided margins and would do the same at Congressional level if the districts weren't so gerrymandered.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Interesting that the Tories still represent the two rich downtown neighborhoods (Kensington and the City). In the US, those would be the most uppity of Democrat districts--think Henry Waxman's Westwood or Carolyn Maloney's Upper East Side.

Cities of London & Westminister (or is it the other way round?) possibly (although the more politically "downtown" seat is Regents Park & North Kensington, a safe Labour seat nowadays), but not Kensignton & Chelsea (you don't really get anywhere like it in the U.S nowadays...)

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North Southwark & Bermondsey (then called Bermondsey) was a Labour stronghold until a vicious by-election in the '80's when Simon Hughes (Lib) won it... he's made it his personal fiefdom and wins on the back of a huge personal vote (although he nearly went down in '97)