William Cook

The suburban battleground

The PM knows victory is to be found among the privet hedges

In Westminster, all the general election chatter is about Brexit. Will Tory Remainers turn Lib Dem? Will Labour leavers desert Jeremy Corbyn? As polling day draws near, however, the Europe obsession must recede. Politicians may not be able to look past last year’s referendum, but voters will have moved on. MPs will find that, as before, the great issue of our time will be just one of many on the doorsteps. This summer’s battleground won’t be Brussels. It will be suburbia.

Domestic matters will decide whether Theresa May returns to Downing Street with a fat majority, and no one is more domesticated than the average suburbanite. We are intensely local. We want good local schools and good local hospitals — we don’t like grand projects like HS2. If we’re asked to vote on Brexit, we’ll vote on it, but we’re far more concerned about parochial issues like refuse collection and potholed roads.

I know whereof I speak. Five years ago, after 25 years amid the Chiswick chatterati, I finally called time on my metropolitan lifestyle and hauled my elitist arse back to suburbia. It was the rudest awakening of my pampered life. Like countless middle-class Britons, I grew up in a humdrum dormitory town and couldn’t wait to leave it. When I first left suburbia 30 years ago, I vowed never to return. Now I am back among the privet hedges and crazy paving, and I can see what I was blind to in west London: that suburbia, not the inner city, is where elections (rather than referendums) are won and lost.

Like lots of snobby Londoners, I’d always looked down on suburban values. When I returned to suburbia, I realised these aspirations actually make good sense. I wanted a nice house with a garden, I wanted a decent education for my children and I wanted easy access to the city without the hassle of inner city life.

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