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Britain goes to the polls next week. Yet this has barely registered on the media radar. These aren’t the forgotten elections; they are the ones nobody’s bloody heard of. This is surprising, because they have real political significance. North of the border, the Scottish parliamentary elections will almost certainly result in another overall majority for the SNP. But we might also see something no one would have predicted even two years ago: the Tories beating Labour into second place. In Wales, the assembly elections will reveal whether Labour can hang on to power, but also whether Ukip can establish itself as a political force there. In England, the local elections will be Jeremy Corbyn’s first big test. And across England and Wales, the police and crime commissioner elections will show if the public can be persuaded to engage with genuine localism.
The main reason for this lack of attention is that the EU referendum is consuming Downing Street’s attention; one No.
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