The story of a council election decided by drawing straws isn’t the most remarkable thing to happen in Northumberland today, not by a long way.
Pegswood. Cramlington. Morpeth. These aren’t the names of places that normally figure much in national political reporting or debate. That’s because they’re in Northumberland, or more accurately, south Northumberland, where Labour has dominated for my entire lifetime until now.
The first half of that life was spent in Northumberland, and I still call the place home even though I’ve lived somewhere else for more than 20 years. I grew up in the glorious rural north of the county, but I went to school in Morpeth; my grandparents were from Pegswood, a pit village not far from Ashington, where I was born.
Even allowing for the passage of time, the effects of (mild) gentrification, the decline in class-based voting and the awfulness of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, I’m still struggling to comprehend the fact that Labour today lost the council ward of Pegswood – to the Conservatives.
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