Phillip Wickenden: The political map has been redrawn

Eight weeks ago, in this publication, I argued that Gorton & Denton was not the by-election it looked like. Not a slap, not a tantrum, not the kind of mid-term wobble that gets over-interpreted for forty-eight hours. It was, I suggested, a structural fracture - Labour's old coalition unbundled by two opponents at once. Reform on the culturally conservative flank. The Greens on the progressive one. The old red umbrella no longer keeping both electorates dry. The local elections were the test of whether that diagnosis travelled. It did. In England, Labour lost more councillors than it n...