Scraps for the British Losers

IN THE election’s blurry aftermath, as Bagehot, dull with tiredness, struggled to think through the causes of the Labour Party’s calamitous defeat, he found clarity in a traditional journalistic resource: the taxi-driver who ferried him between television studios. A 40-something British Pakistani, resident in Essex and one of five sons to an immigrant father, none of whom had previously voted for anyone but Labour, he mentioned that three, including himself, had just voted Tory. “Because of the economy” he muttered gnomically, then added, as if it were hardly worth mentioning, “and because Ed Miliband’s completely useless.”