Having won over Labour leave voters, the question is whether the Tories can keep them

It is an election that has, in many ways, left the country deeply divided, most obviously between big city and large town, between England and Wales on the one hand, and Scotland and to a lesser extent Northern Ireland on the other.

The final swing from Labour to Conservative is around 4.6%, not quite as dramatic as Margaret Thatcher’s win in 1979 (5.2%) or even David Cameron’s in 2010 (5%) – and certainly nothing like Tony Blair’s win for Labour in 1997 (10%).

But it is emphatic enough, particularly given it is the fourth win for the Tories in a row, coming at a time when governments are usually exhausted. In fact, the Conservative party’s share of the vote is at its highest level since that landmark victory in 1979.

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The swings this time range from 7.9% in the north-east to 6.5% in the West Midlands and 5.3% in Wales. But in the south-west, the swing to the Conservatives was 3.6% and in London, a more modest 2.7%. Meanwhile, in Scotland it was the Scottish National party that won 48 out of 59 seats.

Full demographic studies emerge months after an election, but they will almost certainly show that the sharp divide between younger and older voters has not been eroded by this latest election. “Age is still the sharpest divide in British politics today,” says Martin Boon, from the polling firm Deltapoll.

Pre-election polls, such as from Number Cruncher politics, show support for Labour among 18- to 24-year-olds at 71%, and among 25- to 34-year-olds at 59%, with the Conservative government offering no compelling solution to their concerns, such as the affordability of homes or the levels of student debt.

Older voters have a different view. The same figures have the two main parties running almost neck and neck among the 35 to 44s, while among 55 to 64s, Conservative support runs at 56% and this rises to 64% among those aged 65 and above.

But it is not enough for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour to hope it represents a generational project and that the party can somehow age its way to victory, building out from university seats it hung on to, such as Canterbury and Warwick & Leamington, not least because in so many other respects the electorate is united against it.

The most interesting variable here is social class. The Conservatives lead Labour among AB voters, senior and middle professionals, junior white collar C1 workers and C2 skilled manual workers – in the last category by 46% to 33%, according to ICM’s final pre-election poll. Only among the DE group, the semi-skilled, unemployed and pensioners, is Labour ahead, by just 3 points (42% to 39%), underlining how the popularity of the Conservatives almost led to Boris Johnson’s party sweeping the board.

Look again at that 13-point lead among C2 voters: it is almost as if the Conservatives understood working-class voters better than the party of the workers, as was shown in the capturing of seats such as Redcar and Burnley, or Newcastle-under-Lyme, the first time the Tories have held the seat for a century.

Those who ran focus groups in the north of England report how struck they were by the credibility of the Conservatives’ pared down, one policy campaign – finish the first stage of the Brexit process with us or endure a further referendum under Labour. Clearly, the implied cultural nationalism hit home.

Labour’s strategy to make £140bn of promises was often met with derision: Deborah Mattinson, from Britain Thinks, said: “People would often joke about what else Labour was promising for free.” Lots of the policies Labour proposed were popular individually but when mashed together without a simple message, people switched off.

The question now becomes whether the electoral realignment endures, or whether, in the words of the former Labour MP Gisela Stuart, leavers were simply lending their votes to enable Brexit. “Voting for Brexit this time does not make me a Tory now or in the future,” she said a fortnight ago.

In another sense, the argument is irrelevant. The postwar history of Britain shows that the public can reach diametrically different conclusions between one election and the next, although it usually takes a fresh leader to do it, and an argument that is won in the national culture long before the campaigning begins.

The fourth-in-a-row disaster for Labour in 1992 was followed by the landslide in 1997. This time around, the Tories probably won the argument in September and October once it was clear that Brexit could not get through the Commons again; after all, Johnson’s party started the campaign with a 10-point poll lead, and ended it 11.6 points and a majority of 80 ahead.