The failure of the right

Sometimes things that don’t happen are as important as those that do. In the Sherlock Holmes story Silver Blaze, about the theft of a racehorse, the failure of a dog to bark is the central fact that allows the crime to be solved. Holmes mentions this ‘curious incident of the dog in the night-time’ to a Scotland Yard detective who is puzzled and tells him: ‘The dog did nothing in the night-time.’ Holmes replies: ‘That was the curious incident.’

There is a strong case for regarding the failure of a dog to bark as the central fact of British political life today. As I recently noted on this site, the government has annoyed many of its natural well-wishers, leading about one in ten of them so far to withdraw support and take up residence in the ‘don’t know/won’t vote’ segment of the electorate. Given that lax immigration control appears to be a key driver of this movement, it should not surprise us that very few of the deserters have chosen to throw their lot in with Labour or another left-of-centre party.