Warning: what I’m about to write includes some critique of middle-class culture and values. If you are not prepared to hear that, don’t read this. For the last twenty years I have, by intention, lived in the poorest ten percent of communities in the country. For the last ten years I have served as an ordained resident of some of the kinds of communities that have voted heavily for the Conservative Party. These are my observations on what I see as a long-term disengagement from the Labour Party by the people I live in and among. It is tempting to say “oh it was Corbyn” or “it was Brexit”. They are the Archduke Franz Ferdinand to the arms race and militarisation of various other factors (if you want a cuppa to go through that analogy you are very welcome). Here are my top ten of why respectable working-class communities have gone blue. Let me explain ‘respectable’ working class. It’s a term Lynsey Hanley uses in in her book of the same name. I may not have her exact sense of wh
This is where some of what I think gets a public audience.