Tricolour Britain

With unionists getting grubbed in Scotland and Labour being driven to near-extinction in vast swathes of the south, a new map of political Britain is emerging. In my latest Telegraph column, I called it ‘Tricolour Britain’ — the SNP at the top, Tories at the bottom and Labour stuck in the middle (with Wales). Policy Exchange has today released research which throws more light on this slow-mo political segregation. I thought CoffeeHousers may be interested in what strike me as the top points.
 
1. Scottish Tory Syndrome is when a once-dominant party loses and doesn’t recover. The party has failed to capture the imagination of voters, so when its apparatus is knocked down there’s no political force to bring it back. Rather than become hated, it is ridiculed. When I left Scotland in 1995, voting Tory was still seen as a great evil. Now, it’s seen as a curiosity — a harmless but odd English habit like Morris Dancing or cricket.