by Liam Stokes

The general election has given hope to those of us hoping for a rural Labour revival, but also pause for thought. This is an area in which I have a personal interest. In this year’s Wiltshire Council elections I stood for Labour in the very rural north Wiltshire ward in which Jeremy Corbyn grew up. It was an uplifting experience. People were pleased and surprised to find a candidate roaming the country lanes wearing a red rosette. The most oft-heard quip was “best of luck mate, you’ll need it round here”. Others were more encouraging, which was much appreciated during long and lonely days leafletting. I’ll be eternally grateful to the landscaper who, as my spirits were flagging on a particularly long and rainy walk down an especially remote track, took a break from shovelling gravel to tell me he was glad to see someone “standing for the working man”. But for all that warmth on the doorstep, I got 10% of the vote. Believe it or not even that was 2% better than Labour did last time. The Tory got 69%.

I shouldn’t have been surprised; in the wake of the 2015 election it was painfully clear that Labour had a “rural problem”. Maria Eagle MP wrote a paper with that very title. There are 199 rural constituencies in England and Wales, of which Labour won 30. Earlier this year things got even worse with the loss of Copeland, taking us to 29.

A Fabian Society report produced in the immediate aftermath pointed to 148 constituencies Labour should target in the next general election in order to secure a majority. Maria Eagle’s report highlighted that 28 of these seats were in rural England and Wales, and fretted over the cultural disconnect that might mean we wouldn’t win them. Her report found that rural voters saw Labour as insular and metropolitan, while the party viewed the countryside with “polite indifference”.

Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party quickly offered succour to the rural Labour activist. He declared in 2015 that he wanted Labour to become “as much a party in the communities like the one in which I was born (North Wiltshire- 60% Tory) as it is for people in inner city constituencies like the one I represent (Islington North- 73% Labour)”. Corbyn commissioned a report to this end, a report that found Labour needed to offer solutions on rural housing, transport and broadband, and support for farming and fishing industries.

Some of this made it into the manifesto, which to my mind was one of the strongest rural manifestos Labour have produced in some time. The introduction of a National Infrastructure Commission, a focus on protecting farmers from post-Brexit uncertainty, the commitment to invest in broadband, housing and transport in rural areas, and the promise to “rural proof” all legislation were all creative proposals, all good, saleable stuff on the countryside doorstep.

So what happened in last week’s election? Well, of those 28 rural seats Maria Eagle highlighted, we won five. That is great news and is most certainly progress. But unfortunately we also lost two. So a net gain of three rural seats, taking us to 32 out of 199, which still isn’t brilliant.

Of Labour’s gains in England and Wales, only 16% were in rural seats, while 40% of our losses (thankfully a much smaller dataset) were rural. The two seats Labour lost were both classified as “Rural 50”, the second highest class of rurality. Of the five we won, one was also “Rural 50” but the other four were only “Sig Rural”, the least rural of the countryside classifications. Results in the most rural seats, “Rural 75”, remain unchanged- we still hold only nine of the 75 such seats up for grabs in England and Wales.

So why does the truism Maria Eagle coined in her paper still largely ring true- the more rural the constituency, the worse Labour perform? Undoubtedly there is a cultural disconnect which cannot be fixed overnight. No matter the quality of Labour’s offer to rural communities, it simply won’t get a fair hearing until that is rectified. Animal rights issues are not the same thing as rural issues, yet instead of seeking to address the rural disconnect too often the Labour campaign simply defaulted to overemphasising the Conservative commitment to a free vote on the future of the Hunting Act. This commitment has appeared in every Tory manifesto since 2005 and simply isn’t interesting to rural voters. Research undertaken immediately before the general election showed only 0.39% of people spontaneously mention hunting when asked what will influence their vote. When asked to rank issues in order of importance, supporting or opposing foxhunting is less important to voters than the greenbelt, wind farms, broadband connectivity and the future of HS2. Yet #KeepTheBan was allowed to crowd out every other rural policy Labour had to offer.

I’m not arguing that we change our policy on foxhunting, but those issues that are deemed vastly more important than hunting are issues on which there are interesting Labour solutions that we need people to hear. Animal rights campaigns are disproportionately noisy by their very nature, but that noise is not helpful when trying to communicate a policy offer to a rural community that at the moment is not inclined to listen.

In my role at the Countryside Alliance I am working with the Fabian Society on a piece of extensive research into how Labour can improve its offer to rural communities, partly in terms of policy but mostly in terms of culture. We are seeking the answer to the question of how we get that fair hearing that Labour ideas really deserve. This research is needed now more than ever, and alongside that work I’ll now be looking to speak to candidates who stood in rural seats to try and learn from their experiences.

The progress we have made is fantastic, but the fact it was so overwhelmingly urban illustrates the fact that the route to a Labour majority now lies down the country roads of rural England and Wales. A Labour that is strong in both town and country is a Labour that will put a Labour prime minister in Number 10.

Liam Stokes is Head of Shooting at the Countryside Alliance

Tags: Countryside Alliance, General election 2017, Jeremy Corbyn, Liam Stokes, rural constituencies