Theresa May’s love of class politics shows she’s no heir to Blair

One of the professional drawbacks of coming from Scotland and then moving to London is that I don’t really know an awful lot about England. True, I spent a few years in East Anglia on my way south, but it was a particular part of East Anglia that possibly has rather more dreaming Gothic spires, rusted bicycles and robotics labs than the norm, so I’m not sure it was wholly representative.

Still, I know the cities. I have spent enough time in Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield, say, to know that they are not so terribly different from Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness or even the bits of Edinburgh without the cobbles. Furthermore, I cleave to a firm — if easy to ridicule — belief that even a fairly affluent life in central-ish London leaves you considerably more in touch with the concerns of the urban poor nationwide than a middling-income life somewhere more provincial and green.