The 2016 Christmas market in Birmingham. The city’s benefitted from huge investment but too little of it has reached the rest of the Midlands
Theresa May is utterly humiliated, forced to rely on the Democratic Unionists for a majority. Jeremy Corbyn has exceeded all expectations. Far from losing ground, Labour made a net gain of 30 seats – not just in the north and Wales but in London, the south-east, south-west and Scotland. Corbyn’s critics have been silenced and his position as leader is now in no doubt. Theresa May, by contrast, is on borrowed time, as is her government. The prospect of another general election, either later this year or early in 2018, looms large.
I was on the doorstep in Bedford – one of the seats that Labour unexpectedly gained – on election day and it was clear that something was afoot. To my surprise, no doors were slammed in our faces: instead Labour voters were turning out in their droves, as were former Tory and UKIP voters and those who’d never voted before.
But it’s easy to forget, amidst all the jubilation on the centre-left, that Labour lost this election. Badly. Labour won 262 seats, nine fewer than Kinnock did in 1992, and only three more than Gordon Brown in 2010. Given that both 1992 and 2010 are remembered as catastrophic defeats for Labour, it’s difficult to see the 2017 result as a triumphant success.
Like most observers my predictions were way out: in a blogpost on the eve of the election I predicted a Tory majority of 55. But the gist of my argument – that Theresa May would do better than she deserved to, and that Labour had no chance of winning – still held true. Exceeding expectations is not the same as winning. Continue reading
A screeching U-turn on long-term care bills. Uninspiring, robotic TV appearances – and several non-appearances at leadership debates and Today programme interviews. An inability to think on her feet, answer unscripted questions from the public, show herself as a team player, or display a smidgeon of humour, courage, imagination or even humanity. 
There are few pleasures like exploring an unfamiliar town on foot for the first time. A new series of posts on this website, In Praise of Ordinary Places, will look at Middle England towns that are overlooked by tourists (Oxford, Bath and Stratford-upon-Avon need not apply). This is the antidote to Crap Towns. I’ll speak as I find and won’t overlook ugliness, tackiness and misery. But I’ll also celebrate authenticity, unexpected surprises, and the ordinariness of places that rarely feature in Best Places to Live contests. First up: Bedford.
Cuba is one of the few policy areas where Trump could go either way. Donald Trump’s ghoulish tweet announcing “Fidel Castro is dead!” just a few hours after the Cuba leader had died last November might indicate that his attitude to Cuba will be like his attitude to just about everything else: insensitive, narcissistic and goading. But in fact, the ongoing thaw in US-Cuba relations is one Obama initiative that Trump may support.
The river Nene – the slowest-flowing river in England, and its tenth-longest – meanders through Northamptonshire past water meadows and dozens of former gravel pits, long ago flooded and now a nationally important habitat for wetland birds. Northamptonshire’s an underrated county, the Nene is its under-rated river, and one of its most verdant stretches is between Irthlingborough and Wellingborough. 
Constituency boundary changes don’t just matter to map anoraks or political obsessives (I’m a bit of both). And the proposals won’t just mean a cull of MPs: they will reshape our politics by disenfranchising millions of voters. With no suggestion of proportional representation for the House of Commons, or a democratically-elected Lords, the new boundaries will make our electoral system even less fair. And just when Theresa May’s government needs a strong opposition, the changes will further distract and divide Labour, pitting many of its embattled MPs against each other.
