Who is popular today?

Everyone must have seen the recent stories of greed and arrogance. How will this play out on Thursday’s elections?
What kind of country has this become? We will know more when Thursday’s election results roll in by the weekend. Polls are narrowing but the Tories average 42% against Labour’s 35%. That’s extraordinary, when a party 11 years in power should expect heavy losses in midterm votes.
But these are exceptional times: after 14 months of draconian restrictions the UK emerges blinking into the light, vaccinated and liberated, bouncing with anticipated bingeing and boozing. Many households who’ve saved money through lockdown are awash with surplus cash and homeowners revel in Rishi Sunak’s deliberately created house-price boom. Even those who lost relatives and livelihoods celebrate freedom: if not, then success on Thursday tells the government it can safely ignore them as a discontented minority. Continue reading...