BY ANDREW MILNE
Holborn and St Pancras is a strange place and not indicative of the wider country. I worked there once and indeed was a student up the road at the polytechnic in Kentish Town. Disconcerted at the bizarre by-election as the dust settles, squires should take heart from several little-reported facts.
First: In a constituency with 70,000 registered voters just 12,000 turned out to vote for the winning candidate. 9,000 voted for the runner-up. In a country rapidly going broke the contest between two far-left parties, the Greens and the Reds, redolent with antisemitism and fiscal denial, is nevertheless remarkable. The Tories and Reform UK polled less than 4,000 votes between them. Nothing better illustrates the crisis in British democracy.
Secondly: The Conservatives, despite a rip-roaring performance by Kemi Badenoch at the Birmingham conference, have yet to arrest their decline. Whatever the polls pretend, Joe Public is not convinced by Tory promises of reform – no pun intended. That said, time is on their side.
Thirdly: Reform UK can take comfort from the demographics of the constituency. Campaigners know full well voters only turn out to vote when there is a clear prospect of their party winning. The next election will be won by concentrating resources on those seats deemed winnable. Ask any boxer or MMA fighter: Every defeat is a lesson in winning.
In conclusion we should remember outgoing MP Sir Keir Starmer walked away from parliament unable to handle the rough and tumble of discussion, wit and debate. By contrast Winston Churchill revelled in it. Labour’s policies and personalities do not stand up to ribald argument. Burnham is no better than Starmer in this respect. The Labour Party, I submit, is not in this for the long haul, not anymore.
Brits and brave-hearts striving to save the United Kingdom should cheer up. We live to fight another day. To squires and places where they sing let me commend the poem, Celia – by Adrian Mitchell. Rattling up to Euston one evening to catch a late train home to my young wife, I had rarely felt more down and tired after a day of budgets and bad business. Then I looked up and saw the following poem on the carriage wall. ‘When I am sad and weary, When I think all hope has gone….I walk along High Holborn (and) think of you with nothing on….’
Andy Milne is a writer based in the West Country. His book, Children of the Resurrection, is available on Amazon.