Image: Jeremy Hunt, kept on as Health Secretary by new Prime Minister Theresa May.
As I arrived in Southwold for the annual family gathering, I was puzzled by a plethora of red, white and blue bunting. Was it, I wondered, a touching gesture of solidarity with Nice (it was the day after the Bastille Day massacre)? Or was it, perhaps, an unusually extravagant celebration of Brexit, in a region heavily dependent on fishing and pretty antagonistic to the European project from the outset? Eventually I was told that the Town Council had originally purchased the bunting for the Queen’s Silver Jubilee in 1977, and brought it back into service for her 90th Birthday.
My grandmother grew up close to Southwold and I have extended family there (including, by marriage, a Conservative Mayor of the 1970s, whom I tend not to mention very often). My parents moved there in retirement. I have visited every year (bar one, which I regretted) since 1964.
