I’ve spent much of this week on ghost trains in near empty high-speed carriages covering the upcoming Mayoral elections away from London.
Although shops, cafés and bars are still shut everywhere, I found much more life on the streets of the “provincial” cities such as Bristol and Birmingham than in the centres of the capital cities I’ve been in this year in Scotland, England and the United States.
When the votes are counted after 6 May most of the interest will be on the impact of these local elections on national politics. Is the SNP’s push for a second independence referendum strengthened or weakened? Is the fall of council seats going to stall the momentum of Boris Johnson or Keir Starmer? Will the “levelling-up agenda” boost the Tories in the North of England, especially in the parliamentary byelection in Hartlepool.
