Peterborough has a new MP after yesterday’s by-election but, though this is a divisive time in British politics, the campaign has been tranquil by local standards. Stewart Jackson, Tory MP there until 2017, says the constituency has produced “rough and tumble” since it first returned a member in 1542. “In 1906, one candidate for that year’s general election had their carriage set alight by opponents and, in 1970, Harmar Nicholls [the Tory MP] knocked out a trades union shop steward at a hustings.” Thank God no one had a milkshake.
Tory leadership hopeful Rory Stewart tells Politico that he once memorised TS Eliot’s Four Quartets. He finds these lines to be timely: “So, while the light fails / On a winter’s afternoon, in a secluded
