A number of weeks ago, on my way down to do a job in London, i stopped in for a meal at my uncle & aunt’s house in leafy Amersham. My uncle, a retired millionaire venture capitalist, talked a lot that night, me from one side of the tracks, him from the other. We knew nothing of the July general election but obviously knew that one was imminent.

We agreed on one thing, Britain needs a quiet revolution to prevent a loud one.

Obviously i am very pleased to see Labour come into government, i like Keir Starmer as a person who is keen to put ideology aside and govern in pragmatism. We also see a cabinet which is a lot more geographically & educationally diverse than what we have seen in the last fourteen years. I reckon that under all conservatives leaders there cabinets have not had any members who represented constituencies any more than one hundred miles from London.

I hope this is a government that is heavily influenced by the North & Regions and it looks like it should be, with a Chancellor, Home Secretary & Education secretary who are of the North. Hopefully this will break the cosy London & SE pre-eminence. The treasury green book needs to be shredded and it historical sinking of infrastructure funds into London. The North has huge untapped potential, which i believe Labour has the ability to unlock.

I am also glad that Reform & the Greens won five & four seats respectively, why well it subjects both to the light of democracy and the discipline of parliament. Nigel Farage will have to knuckle down to the day to day of representing Clacton and will not have so much room to chuck in Trumpian rhetoric grenades into the media. As Farage says Reform will actually have to become a party formally established, not a limited company. That party formation will have to bring in party discipline.

I have high hopes for this Labour government, which is in a position where it has to have delivery as its watchword, and cannot afford to descend into culture or internecine warfare.

Hopefully over the next few weeks i will have opportunity to blog more & more deeply as we see the formation and seeds of delivery.