John Harris

Our urban centres are bearing the brunt of the latest austerity cuts. Not since the Thatcher era has a Tory government dared to pit town against country this cynically

‘There’s nobody representing us,” said the thirtysomething man killing time on a side street in Handsworth, Birmingham. Amid the weekday bustle on nearby Soho Road, a smattering of people told me they would be voting Labour, there was irate talk about the Conservatives’ record on immigration, and a few British-Asian former Brexit supporters said they now regretted voting for the leave side, what with prices creeping up and the uncertainties facing small business people. But to a greater extent than anywhere I’ve visited over the past three weeks, the election felt irrelevant to ordinary life.

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There is a deepening polarisation at the heart of all this, glaringly evident on the national political map

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