Tag: James Callaghan

We're upside down and back to front You need a long memory to recall another time when politics was anywhere near as weird as it is now. The 1970s are the only period that comes close. In some of the most bizarre scenes ever witnessed at Westminster, Labour's weary backbenchers, some of them not long for this world, had to be wheeled through the lobbies for votes which were as critical as their medical conditions. These are the epic events riotously re-imagined in James Graham's excellent new play This House. With an air of mild surprise, he told me the Tories' campaign was going better than expected in gritty areas like his, whereas the more prosperous districts towards the south of the city, long seen as Conservative strongholds, were proving more of a challenge. They owe it to later declarations elsewhere in the city that Labour's majority now is proportionately virtually identical to what it was before the city's first all-out election. His party needed just two more seats for a majority on the council. Up the road in Walsall, the Tories replace Labour as the largest party and are confident of forming a minority administration. That would certainly tally with the Conservatives' capture of former Labour seats in Walsall North and Stoke South in last year's general election. Labour sprung their biggest surprise last year in capturing Warwick and Leamington, one of the Conservatives' traditional affluent strongholds.