Populism’s Postcodes

There's a deep connection between geography and the populist vote. Here's what our research undercovered.

We used to say that all politics is local. Today, it is hyper-local. The little plot between your front door, the green space where you might walk the dog, the shop where you might buy the milk and the school gate to which you might walk the kids, shapes how you feel about your life, your community, your future.

And for too many, those spaces now feel like they are in free fall. When everything around you is going to rack and ruin, it is no wonder that people reach for those who promise to tear everything down and start again.

The link between populism and geography

For some years now, a growing body of work confirms what instinct has long told us: populism is rooted in place. Studies across the US and Europe show how discontent clusters in towns and regions left behind by globalisation and deindustrialisation. Trump’s vote surged in hollowed-out Rust Belt counties. Marine Le Pen’s strength lies in shuttered Northern towns. The AfD prospers in Germany’s former East.

Academics like Ben Ansell & David Adler were amongst the first to spot the trend. They showed how house prices - their rise or failure to rise - are a map of discontent: homeowners in places where values have stagnated or declined are the populist base, while the winners of rising property wealth lean liberal. My quick look at the general election results showed a fascinating link between the regions where Reform did best, and (lack of) wealth growth.

Across the West, the cartography of decline is the cartography of revolt. The Financial Times’ Joel Suss recently underlined the point. He found, in the US, the relative weakness of real income growth since 2020 was a strong predictor of the Trump swing between 2020 and 2024. Cities with slower growth saw greater swings to Trump. And here in the UK, there’s some outstanding work getting to the bottom of this, including first class work led by ICON, the SMF and UCL’s Policy Lab which is working on a brilliant project with More in Common and Citizens UK.

The research work on Decoding Populism with Best for Britain and research agency Faster Horses together with Policy Institute, Kings College and the Fairness Foundation underlines why this really is one of the single most important fronts on which ministers can make a difference dealing with the causes of Reform’s rise.

What our research shows

Our new work with Best for Britain and Faster Horses helps crystallise the picture here in the UK. We found that people considering a Reform vote are far more likely to believe their area has declined. In fact, overall, nearly two-thirds of those considering Reform say so.

But as bad as this looks, this mask of averages hides extremes which are even worse. Amongst the most zealous tribes of Reform - those least likely to consider voting for another party - we found the figure rises to 80% who say their area has declined. And what is more, these groups - the Disgusted Disruptors and Left Behind Collectivists, are far less likely to feel there is a strong sense of community spirit in their area either.

To help understand just what was going on here the poll, led by YouGov, offered respondents a free text box to explain just what was going wrong. When we word-cloud the responses, the principal problems become clear.

The ethnographic study really hammered home the point. The grievances found are visceral. Declining high streets, weeds and litter, graffiti, potholes, boarded-up shops, shuttered youth centres. “It’s soul-destroying to see our area turn to crap,” one respondent told us. Others spoke of crime, antisocial behaviour, drugs, and a belief that no one - not politicians, not councils, not the police - cares anymore.

Here’s the Faster Horses summary of what people said;

A few illustrative comments from the study group light up what we found about the way people are feeling.

Decline triggers withdrawal. People stop going out. Civic pride withers. Communities fracture. One person told us bluntly: “I don’t want to go out anymore. It makes me sad to see the history of our town shat on from a great height.” Indeed, 90% of voters considering Reform UK said they felt they had either not very much, or ‘not all all’ the power over what happens in their local community - that is about 7% higher than the national average.

Many of the same sentiments have been well-documented by ICON, UCL/More in Common/ Citizens UK and the SMF in their studies. I know all too well from my own constituency how the brutal austerity of the last decade and a half has destroyed our local spaces and hamstrung our local police teams (for us, speeding in particular is a nightmare).

Restoring pride in place is without doubt going to create some dilemmas for ministers - not least when it comes to sustained funding for neighbourhood police teams and financing a real plan to breathe new life into high streets, something we are now looking at hard on the House of Commons Business & Trade Committee.

The challenge for ministers is this: in the grand scheme of public investments that have to be made -like lifting living standards and turning around the pessimism created by years of downward mobility - it may well prove that investment in local place provides the biggest bang for buck.

I know some ministers absolutely get this. Yvette Cooper fought tooth and nail for the funding she needed to deliver Labour’s neighbourhood policing pledge. And Angela Rayner’s new Plan for Neighbourhoods could prove one of the smartest investments this government makes in defeating Reform UK - as long as the funding is flexible enough to be able to fund solutions to the precise mix of problems that a particular area may confront, regardless of the Whitehall department responsible for that particular service. Because if populism is hyper-local, then so too must be the cure.

Nostalgia has always been part of the populist appeal. But what people yearn for is not empire or greatness - it is for a local way of life that feels lost. Rebuilding that sense of belonging is not an optional extra. It is central to renewing our democracy.