Take what follows as a parable, then a warning.

An arm of British government has been in Tory hands for more years than residents care to remember. Having run the place into the ground, the blues do not repent. Rather than contrition, they offer belligerent arrogance. Surely, their opponents and critics think, surely voters will punish them? When the electoral fury doesn’t descend, a mood of political dejection starts to settle. Until one polling night, the Conservatives get the boot. At last! There are celebrations that evening. And when the newly elected Labour administration arrives for its first meeting, activists hand over roses. “Labour are red / Tories are sooo blue …” reads the tag. “We trust our services / Return in-house with you!”

Are we in post-general election Britain this Thursday evening? No: this is two years ago, in Barnet, north London. May 2022 was a historic moment for the capital’s politics: a London borough that had never elected a Labour administration in its 57 years of existence finally flipped. The back yard of Margaret Thatcher, a local MP for her entire Commons career, adopted what she would have derided as socialism.

No wonder Keir Starmer went hurtling up the Northern line the next day to claim the Tory scalps as his own. Just the year before, Labour had lost the Hartlepool byelection and he had reportedly considered quitting. Now he was back in the race. The rest you already know.

I reported from Barnet throughout the 2010s because to me it summed up the worst excesses of George Osborne’s economics. This suburb didn’t just accept austerity; it embraced it. Barnet farmed out a vast swathe of its services to private business, and claimed it was........

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