I went to the pub last night (thoughts on the election)

Last night I went to the pub. This wasn't a special occasion, just what I do pretty much every Saturday night. The Fleece in Cullingworth is, to use the jargon of the pub industry, a "wet led" boozer - no food other than crisps and peanuts, no fancy craft ales, no men with beards sipping thirds of strangely coloured liquid allegedly called beer. Just a clean pub with drinkable beer and a welcoming landlady.

I'm going to the bar for a refill and a bloke I've known off and on for some long while marched up to me, hand outstretched - "well done Simon, absolutely brilliant, I'm so pleased". I knew and everyone there knew what he was talking about - Thursday's election and the Conservative win. The handshake and thanks for me (undeserved as I'd done very little to secure the victory) was because, having been the local councillor for the village for 24 years, I was the first Conservative politician - albeit a retired one - this bloke had met since the election. "I'm not a Conservative," he said, "just a working class bloke but this is what we need."

All the pundits down in London are pouring over the new electoral maps, scratching their heads and asking what happened and why that working class bloke in the pub joined tens of thousands of other working class men and women in voting Conservative, many for the first time. And whether this is a one-off, the final act of the Brexit process, a condemnation of Corbyn's nasty racist views, or part of a longer trend for the working class vote?

Only time will provide an answer but it does seem that the collapse of the "Red Wall" of Labour seats in the North and Midlands marks both a victory in what some call a "culture war" and also the continuing realisation by many ordinary workers that their interests are no longer served by those more concerned about the pay of rich female newsreaders than with helping ordinary communities deal with the tides of social and economic change. Labour is now a party of the public sector manager, filled with people whose attitude to struggling communities is essentially to say "there, there. I know the Tories are horrid and poverty is dreadful" while promising free stuff to middle class groups - rail commuters, students, WASPI women, yummy mummies.

The Labour Party is filled with MPs who spend almost their entire time telling everyone that the places they're elected to represent are dreadful, poverty-soaked communities. You have only to follow Jess Phillips to see the politics of the begging bowl writ large. And Labour has treated the North like this all the time I've lived here - MPs, Council leaders, officials and officers parade down to London, cap in hand to ask for more cash. Not more cash to do exciting developments, brilliant initiatives, to invest in the genius of Northern enterprise or culture. No, more cash to employ the sort of people who think community development is about hugging communities not empowering them, patronising people who genuinely believe that working class communities haven't the talent or power to do things for themselves.

We see this denial of working class agency in the endless claim that the Brexit referendum was "fixed" or "stolen". We see it in the attitude of London liberals encapsulated by Emily Thornbury saying to a Northern MP: "I’m glad my constituents aren’t as stupid as yours’”. And we see it in the ghastly mantra of Remain Ultras about those Northern working class leave voters being racist, xenophobic bigots. The message from continuity remain, from the Liberal Democrats and, above all, from the Labour Party has been that ordinary men and women are too stupid not to be suckered by advertising, too stupid to understand what they were voting for in 2016.

The people in the pub last night aren't stupid. They mostly work hard, are good at what they do and care for their community, their neighbours and their country. Such folk don't have a blueprint for a better world, just the desire for their government and leaders to occasionally sound like they give a toss about their ordinary dull lives. They didn't ask for - or really want - free broadband and nationalised railways but they would like more police who see their job as catching burglars and dealing with crazy drivers rather than indulging the latest fad. And they don't need free tuition for their kids (who're in college or an apprenticeship learning how to butcher meat, cut hair, lay bricks or bend pipes) just better funding for the primary school. There's no cry for taking over the water company or renationalising rail - if you ask them they'll support it but it's not important to them like making it easier to get a doctors appointment is important to them.

Last night the politics lasted less than five minutes, there were jokes to be made, football results to be considered, songs to listen to and the everyday things of ordinary life - the stuff that really matters, family, friends, jobs and health - to be shared. It is this that the grand media panjandrums don't understand, that politicians and advisors down in the Westminster bubble fail to notice. We're not talking about neocolonialism, intersectional feminism or neoliberalism (because we haven't the faintest idea what you're on about), we're talking about the things that actually matter. I hope the new government frames its policies round these things that matter - family, community, neighbours, health, jobs and friends.

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