Abstract
The loss of many of Labour's core constituencies in the North East Wales, the Midlands and Northern part of England to the Conservative party in 2019 UK general election has been dubbed the fall of the Red Wall. I believe that Brexit as an issue was important in explaining party choice in this election. To test this, a theory from Spies (2013) is employed. It explains how an issue on the non-economic GAL-TAN dimension has a high salience, it causes working class voters to cast their votes based on this dimension rather than the traditional left-right economic dimension - leading to electoral gains for extreme-right parties. I apply this theory to the context of 2019 general election by making the Conservative Party a "functioning equivalence" of a Populist radical right party in the UK and categorise Brexit as an issue on the non-economic GAN-TAN dimension of party competition. High salience is measured through the use of "most important issue" question. The thesis analyses respondents in the Red Wall constituencies with data from the 2019 British Election Study. From the results in the binomial logistic regression, there is evidence to support to claim that high salience of Brexit lead to voters switching parties in 2019 from Labour to Conservative. Working class voters in these constituencies were also more likely to change party than those who were not working class.