Economic Sun Setting on the West

During Britain’s recent general election, I spent a day or two in what was the Midlands coalfield, just missing a whistle-stop visit by Gordon Brown, the soon-to-be-defeated prime minister, by 10 minutes.

It was something of a trip down memory lane; the last time I had been in these industrial towns around Nottingham and Mansfield was a quarter of a century ago, when the heart of the place beat to a different drum of coal mining, textiles and manufacturing.

Now, only one colliery remained, the textile industry had long ago shifted to East Asia, and manufacturing, in the shape of a remaining engineering plant, anticipated possible closure. Most people I met who had jobs were employed in the public sector. They were – almost without exception – nervous about the future.