National Swing Man, the British electorate’s new-old tribe

PSEPHOLOGY these days resembles a trip to an old-fashioned anthropological museum, stuffed with the relics of mysterious tribes that have constituted the British electorate. In one glass case, we find Mondeo Man, the archetypal swing voter of the 1990s. In the next is Workington Man, a Brexit-backing rugby league fan who switched to the Conservatives in 2019. Newer specimens include Waitrose Woman, and her male friend, Spotify Dad—the disaffected middle classes abandoning the Tories. These people inhabit strange lands: the Red Wall, the Blue Wall, the Sea Wall and the Purple Patches.