People in England have been fed-up, nicked-off and put-out.  About the government, the economy, the pothole crisis etc. But now it’s summer, they are merely pissed, all the time.

Since the hot weather arrived in May, matters of despair and decline have been put on hold while legions raid the off-licences in the great annual migration out of doors into every conceivable patch of grass, wielding picnic blankets and picky-bits and harbouring a hankering for sunstroke. The humidity created by the perspiration of millions of linen-coated gentlemen, pink-domed geezers and dolled-up Essex girls creates a heady fume of beer and bubbles, sending the country into an atmospherically-induced silliness.

Even the final throes of Keir Starmer’s premiership passed with little more than a shrug, compared with the fervour of the winter’s dissatisfaction. Almost the most remarked-upon aspect of the sorry saga was the late-running of Andy Burnham’s triumphant Manchester to Euston train service: “21 minutes … enough to entitle him to compensation under the delay repay scheme”, The Times wisely observed, before congratulating the King of the North on his healthy tan.

The soon-to-be prime minister has his own prescriptions for mending the deep divides in British society – devolution, social housing and re-industrialisation. But consideration of these meaty issues can wait, at least until the World Cup and its accompanying “fleeting sense of being part of a unified nation” (The Times) are over, and despair at national decline can resume again.

Beer

Block your ears and look in one direction from atop the white cliffs near Dover, and things are green and pleasant enough, and you might see France in the distance. But the massive highway running behind the crest shatters the romantic illusion, manifestation of Larkin’s foretelling:

“You try to get near the sea / In summer … / .. but all that remains / For us will be concrete and tyres.”

As the dual carriageway dips into the town, a group of men are sinking cans in the sun, sitting on the crumbling wall of the derelict Dockers’ Union building. The local funeral director has parked a fleet of gleaming hearses in the overgrown carpark. Around the corner, a squeaky escalator leading to a doomed SportsDirect is the soundtrack to a lethargic high street whose busiest storefronts are a mobility scooter emporium and the local Wetherspoons. They stand out from all the empty vape shops, and probably explain the prosperity of the undertaker.

At the pub up by the station, a sign is stuck to the door: “Only Regular Customers Allowed Entrance to Televised Football Matches”. Inside, the improbable sight of a 12-year-old geezer, complete with polo shirt and proto-beer belly, doing the rounds picking up glasses. A man scratches his Three Lions tramp stamp, his wife sways to the juke box. The smell of weed wafts in from the courtyard, and the barman sucks on a vape. In the corner, a stag-do of train drivers and customs officers preside over a tableful of pints, before setting off for Magaluf. The groom, in pink dress and wig, offers tips on beating the railway breathalyser.

In his first formal sketching of national Manchesterism last month, the PM-to-be pledged to “turn around towns, high streets and local centres” through redevelopment and tax reform for “businesses that bring social benefits”, such as … pubs. “And let me finish on this,” Burnham said. “Rather than being a marker of decline, shouldn’t we make our high streets the symbols of Britain’s renaissance?” Grease on the escalator and an end to child-geezer labour.

Not beer

On Mayfair’s busiest streets, vape haze is replaced by the shisha smoke wafting over from Berkeley Square, favoured haunt of Gulf billionaires and their slack-jawed children. In the fashionable members’ club, Burnham’s position on fox-hunting is top of the agenda: “The campaign continues,” intones a weak-chinned landowner, sweating profusely amid the chintzy decor, threatening to melt into a floral sofa. Over seabass, ceviche and chablis, recent returnees from Ascot assess the prospects of this winter’s heli-skiing. There’s not a lager in sight.

This pocket of Mayfair is the spiritual, if not political, home of Nigel Farage and his motley milieu of tainted aristocrats, crypto proselytisers and reborn soap stars. As Reform’s fortunes begin to turn, and the whiff of impropriety turns to a stench (money-laundering, Montenegrin casinos etc), Farage has retreated back to the privacy of his Mayfair clubs. At the centre of global capital, populated by American coastal elites, woke European bankers and the “posh Georges” of the world, the distance from Reform’s prospective constituents in England’s run-down seaside towns is … well, apparent.

Farage resigned his seat last week, in an attempt to “stick two fingers up” to the Establishment. Now, he has to leave the pleasures of Mayfair behind to spend the rest of summer dealing with a man with his bin on his head.

The silliness continues.