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Always freaks my nut there are bits of Warwickshire that are north of Birmingham. In many ways, it is the most Midlands of Midlands counties. https://twitter.com/undertheraedar/status/1277319049647710211
There is a place called 'Coalville' in the UK. And it is hardly ever discussed.
I think the existence of the Midlands clarifies a lot of things that are otherwise confusing about British political discourse.
Basically, you have people who aren't considered rich, elite, and connected to the neoliberal post-industrial globalised wealth thing; but who are also right wing and aren't dirt poor.
(I don't actually believe this, btw, the Midlands is deeply Tory for tribal ethnic reasons, rather than economic reasons.)
What changed in 2019 was (retired, elderly, economic insulated, bigoted) people in tribal Labour areas voted Tory for the first time, because they despised Corbyn's cosmopolitan liberalism and didn't give a fuck about the economy.
The Midlands remains tribally Tory. But it's absence from the discourse is... interesting. London is this black hole of money and international prosperity. The North doesn't share in that. The Midlands... Kinda does. The Midlands has never been poor in the way the North has been.
And my sketchy understanding of the British political situation informs me that Keir Starmer needs to win back the red wall northern seats *plus* places in the Midlands. That's his strategy.
That's what all the Our Boys bollocks is about. Firing the token leftist at the sight of the first thing that could be construed as antisemitism...*
*Yeah I mean that was smart and cold-blooded, wasn't it? And it's also orthogonal to what I'm talking about. That was a pitch to centre-left liberalism, rather than the Midlands.
