Simon Jones: Hope and despair

It has been a week since Labour won the general election and the party has made a fast, sensible start to running the country. Truth be told, it feels a bit odd, but I’m sure we’ll get used to ‘boring’ politics once again. 

There’ll be more than a few big optical names that breathed a huge sigh of relief that new health secretary Wes Streeting narrowly retained his seat. Streeting had talked up high street optometry and how it could help the NHS in the run up to the election, but a margin of just 528 votes in the Ilford North constituency would have meant squeaky bum time for those that had courted Streeting previously.