A recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that in the 2019 election, more low-income voters backed the Conservatives than the Labour Party for the first time ever. The Conservatives were, in fact, more popular with low-income voters than they were with wealthier ones.

There is one glaringly obvious reason for this: Brexit. Pro-Remain groups spent a lot of time — and money — attempting to convince others on the Left that the only people who voted Leave were posh old homeowners nostalgic for the days of empire. While such voters were undoubtedly a powerful element in the Leave coalition, they could never have won the referendum on their own.

The Leave campaign succeeded because it tapped into the same anti-establishment energy that propelled Jeremy Corbyn to leader of the Labour Party in 2015 — and nearly into Downing Street in 2017. During the election, I spoke to voters up and down the country who expressed the same sentiment: with the entire British establishment united behind Remain, they finally had a chance to kick back at a political class they felt had cheated their communities over many years.