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This is Part One of a two-part series of blogs from John Denham using More in Common data. Part Two, about how English identities intersect with More in Common’s core values model will be published next week.
Professor John Denham is the Director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics at the University of Southampton. Formerly, he was the Member of Parliament for Southampton Itchen and minister in the last Labour government for 10 years.
Among the vast and still expanding analysis of the 2024 General Election in England little attention has so far been paid to the relationship between voter choices and national identity. This blog examines the correlation between identity and voting intention. It shows that, though less influential than in the recent past, it remains a distinctive feature of England’s electoral landscape. The blog also sheds new light on how and why national identities may be politically mobilised
In the first two decades of the 21st century, the politics of England and the UK were transformed by voters who emphasised their English identity. The votes of the ‘more English than British[1]’ took UKIP from obscurity to agenda setter, secured the fateful promise of an EU referendum, and delivered the Leave vote. In the 2019 ‘Get Brexit Done’ election Boris Johnson’s Conservative gained the support of 68% of the ‘More English than British[2]’, 50% of the ‘equally English and British, but lost narrowly to Labour amongst the ‘More British than English’. In ‘Englishness: the political force transforming British politics’ Henderson and Wyn Jones identify an ‘English world view’ characterised by Euroscepticism and ‘devo-anxiety’. Denham and McKay suggest that ‘political Englishness’ combined concerns about national democracy and sovereignty with concerns about immigration: the two issues that defined Brexit.
However, exactly how national identities become politically mobilised remains controversial and it is not clear whether voters’ understanding of their ‘Englishness’, ‘Britishness’, or blend of the two reflects broader sets of social, economic and political values. This blog (Part One) reports on polling of Britain’s population conducted in the week before the General Election to explore the role that English identity played in shaping the election result. Part Two will examine the relationship between identity and values.
A striking feature of the 2024 election was the collapse of the largely English identifying election coalition that had supported the Conservative Party. Voter intentions surveyed by More in Common a week before polling show that Labour had the largest share of the vote among all the Moreno identity groups.
Nonetheless, a distinct national identity bias remained. Labour was gaining most support amongst the British/More British (and none) groups, while the Conservatives were strongest amongst English/More English groups. Liberal Democrat support varied in a less consistent way.
Reform’s support came primarily from the pro-Leave, anti-immigration part of the Conservative’s 2019 vote and, as the chart below illustrates, Reform drew more heavily on those who emphasised their English identity.
In contrast to the stark electoral alignment by national identity in the 2019 election, national identity appears, at first sight, to have played a much less significant role in 2024. This reflects Labour’s gain amongst the more socially conservative and English identifying parts of the electorate and, to a lesser but measurable extent, a loss of potential support amongst the more liberal and British emphasising voters where support for the Green Party was at its highest.
Nonetheless, the impact of Reform UK on the 2019 Conservative coalition can be illustrated by combining the intended votes for the Conservatives and Reform UK into a single bloc. There are good reasons to think such a combination is misleading from an electoral strategy standpoint. There is polling evidence showing many Reform voters would not have considered voting Conservative and vice-versa but this only emphasises the extent to which Reform UK polarised a block of voters who had largely voted for the Conservatives. As the chart below shows, support for the two main right-wing parties exceeds that for Labour among the ‘English not British’, the ‘more English than British’ and is very close amongst the ‘Equally English and British’.
In broad terms, the electorate maintained an identity bias but the fragmentation of the ‘English identifying’ sections of the electorate had a most decisive – if passive – impact on the 2024 election in England.
Part 2 of this blog, to be published next week, will explore the underlying values and worldviews associated with each of England's identity groups that might be driving these voting patterns.
[1] This draws on voters self-placement on the Moreno scale: 'English not British', 'more English than British', 'Equally English and British', 'More British than English' and 'British not English''. The scale is sometimes simplified as 'more English than British', 'Equally English and British' and 'more British than English'. Unless otherwise noted, we use the full Moreno scale here. ↩
[2] ‘English not British’ plus ‘more English than British'. ↩