Hello and welcome to rock and roll politics, the podcast with me, Steve Richards,

and the entire rock and roll politics cooperative.

And we all need to get together after the

by-election, which is why the podcast is coming out a bit later, waiting for the result

and what a result. We need to delve deep on many different levels to make sense of the

by-election. Before that, just a quick notice to say that Patreon subscribers, and this is relevant,

actually, there are a bonus podcast.

We're doing a series on when prime ministers fall, when they are toppled from within.

And your bonus podcast about the fall of Margaret Thatcher in the autumn of 1990, which looking back has

many kind of topical references. Anyway, that will be arriving, so that's happening.

Now, the by-election, and thank you for some brilliant emails, including from those who live in the constituency.

It's the great thing about the cooperative.

We get eyewitness accounts from within the constituency, not from journalists who go there during the campaign and decide they know the constituency as well as people who've lived there, but from people who've lived there, and not from Vox Pops, which are always artificial and contrived because they have to be

balanced and so therefore they are superficial. So we'll be coming to those very shortly.

But here are some thoughts from me.

Firstly, the result is part of a pattern that has been in place for years.

England, the United Kingdom, is not this small sea conservative place, addicted to some

mythologised technocratic centreground.

If it ever was, and remember Thatcher used to say that if you stand in the centre,

you get run over and she won three elections, including two landslides.

It hasn't been for a long time.

Look at what has happened basically since the Brexit referendum, but actually

...