Other Conservative seats that have been lost in recent by-elections may have had bigger majorities, but they will have been on the receiving end of much less Whitehall benefaction.
All politics, and not just that with a religious flavour, rests on a foundation of essentially pre-rational beliefs each of us has about right and wrong and how the world ought to be.
ConservativeHome’s round-up of ten of our best articles from the preceding week.
Labour held a seat in Neath Port Talbot. The Lib Dems held a seat in Somerset.
Since privatisation, productivity is up 64 per cent, costs down 27 per cent, and bills £120 lower than they would otherwise have been. £190 billion has been invested since 1989.
As strike leader in 1984-85 he was incompetent, closed-minded, and devoid of tactics or strategy. During the course of the year, he walked into every trap set for him by the National Coal Board (NCB) and the Government.
I am wary that our post-Brexit anti-establishment tendency has allowed our national Church to become something too many Tories treat, at best, with indifference, and, at worse, as an enemy.
There is too much empire-building, mission creep, time-wasting diversification, and gasping to catch up with transitory trends.
Both parties are predicting an historic low voter turnout , with the apathy party the likely winner. I don’t want to predict the result, though I am emboldened by doorstep conversations.
The tribal gladiator fights between the different groups of society can be excruciatingly tedious. But this is the way of the world and part of every recalibration process.
Growth is as much a political problem as it is an economic one. We need to spend vastly more time thinking about the trade-offs and compromises required to achieve it, how to sequence reforms, and which battles to pick and when.
Today half of our country’s university grads are able only to tread water. The era of aspiration appears to be over, and the Prime Minister has a rapidly shrinking window to change that perception before the election.
Meaningful fiscal devolution within England would face huge opposition from Labour councils; anything else would not give town halls the incentive to undertake difficult reforms.
Either the Shadow Chancellor has plans and won’t reveal them, or she is talking a good game on growth but has no plans to back it up. Neither scenario inspires confidence.