Staines

Ten years ago I moved to Staines and my mate Kwasi Kwarteng took me on a pub crawl. Kwasi was then the local MP, and as we drank our way around town he taught me a useful political heuristic. ‘If you want to predict an election, don’t listen to the BBC,’ he said. ‘Go to your local and listen to real people.’ Say what you like about Kwasi, but he had that right. My local is a backstreet boozer called the Beehive, which in decor and ambience is a portal back to the later 20th century. I go there for conversation, drinking, to play crib, to do a quiz on a Friday night and for political intelligence. For any pollsters looking to know what England really thinks, it isn’t complicated. Fund the NHS, stop the boats, get the scroungers off the welfare.