Ignore the polls: it’s we voters who’ll write the story of this election | Gary Younge

A hard Brexit and entrenched inequality – or a nation where we can feed our kids and save the planet? It’s up to us

Election night, 2017, at Harrow leisure centre was a tense affair. I had been in the borough for more than a month covering the battle for Harrow West – a Labour-held marginal that was 19th on the Tories’ target list. Labour won it in 1997 with a slim majority and had clung on to it ever since.

The tension however, related to next-door Harrow East, a Tory constituency. It went to recounts, sending the Tory candidate pacing nervously in every direction. He had considered his seat safe; the Labour MP for Harrow West believed his was at risk. Yet Labour won Harrow West by 13,314 votes, increasing its majority fivefold, while in Harrow East the Tory majority was reduced to just 1,757. I had been in the area to write about a seat that Labour might lose. It hadn’t occurred to me they might gain one.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2qemzrm

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