The neglect of working-class voters in the past few decades has had profound consequences for British political life. Disillusioned with the two main parties, many have turned to Nigel Farage's Reform and others are simply not voting at all.

With the next election likely to be a tight race in many key constituencies, something must be done to win these voters back.

But as we find out in the fifth and final part of Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics, a podcast series from The Conversation Documentaries, the relationship between class and voting could be about to become even more complicated. So it's difficult for any party to know how to put an electoral coalition together.

Paula Surridge, professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, has identified what she calls cross-pressured voters as a key demographic in post-Brexit British politics. These are people who are probably economically left wing - they want better public services and wealth redistribution - but who are more right wing on social issues such as immigration and crime and punishment.

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Appealing to such voters is therefore a real challenge. And while the perception is that they've flocked to Farage, Surridge says that's not the full picture at all.

Reform came second in 98 constituencies - 89 of which ended up going to Labour. A lot of those constituencies were won on wafer-thin majorities, and they should be considered highly at risk in the next election. So working out how to appeal to cross-pressured voters is key.

The bigger challenge, however, is winning voters back from the sofa. The truth is that there is a more salient class divide in Britain: who actually votes at all.

According to Oliver Heath, professor of politics at Royal Holloway, University of London, who has tracked the history of turnout and class over the past 20 years, working-class voters are staying away from the ballot box. The first real signs of this were in 2001, when Tony Blair won a second term with a turnout of 59%, one of the lowest in British history.

Read more: The true class divide in British politics is not which party people choose, but whether they vote at all

For decades working-class communities were assumed to vote Labour, and so Labour gave them relatively little political attention. Now, the tables have turned and its Labour constituencies in the Red Wall that are some of the most competitive in the country. But it won't be easy for Labour to bring these voters back on side, says Heath.

Meanwhile, Rosie Campbell, professor of politics at King's College London, warns that we can't presume to know what middle-class voters will do either.

All this means that British politics is more fractured than ever, according to John Curtice, senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research.

One of those options is a radical disruption to the class system itself, potentially triggered by artificial intelligence. A question that Curtice is asking himself:

In other words, AI has the potential to split the middle class and redefine the entire occupational structure of the UK. What will that do to our political preferences? It's all to play for.

For more analysis on what else could shape the way class and politics interact in the future, listen to the full episode of Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics on The Conversation Documentaries.

A transcript is available on Apple Podcasts.

Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics is produced and mixed by Anouk Millet for The Conversation. It's supported by the National Centre for Social Research.

Newsclips in the episode from Guardian News, BBC News, Nigel Farage, David Boothroyd, CBS News and theipaper.

Listen to The Conversation Documentaries via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.