site.btaTorries Failed to Live Up to Brexit Voters' Confidence, Says Kyril Drezov of Keele University

"In order to understand why the British Conservatives are set to fail in tomorrow's UK elections, we need to keep in mind their landslide in the previous elections in 2019, when especially in the Midlands and the North of England they broke through the so-called Red Wall for the first time, Kyril Drezov, co-chair of the Southeast Europe Unit (SEU) of Keele University, said in a BTA interview. He was referring to an area that traditionally votes Labour.

"The Conservatives did not live up to the Red Wall confidence, they did not live up to the confidence of those who had previously voted for Brexit and then, at the point of Brexit, decided that they could vote for the Conservatives, give them their trust," he said. 

"It should be borne in mind that it is here in the Midlands, on the road to the North of England, the place between Manchester and Birmingham - this is England's old industrial heartland that has been hit hardest by deindustrialization, by Margaret Thatcher's reforms - that voters have been voting Labour for decades," Drezov added.

In his words, it was in 2019 that they gave their approval to Boris Johnson, who then famously said, addressing them: "I will not forget that your vote was lent to us and I must justify your trust." "Well, that is exactly what did not happen," said Drezov.