The age of volatility

Every year in British politics seems to be more surprising than the last. Few predicted in 2015 that the Conservatives would win a general election outright for the first time in 20-odd years. Fewer still realised that Theresa May would become the most popular Prime Minister since records began. And almost no one foresaw how the tide would turn against her so dramatically that the Tories would lose their majority, or that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour would make such significant gains.

How to make sense of it all? Tory MPs are being offered an explanation by Gavin Barwell, the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, who has been seeing them in groups (starting with the cabinet) to talk them through the party’s post-election polling. Perhaps the most striking point in his presentation is that we are experiencing political volatility on a scale not seen since after the Great Depression or first world war.