It really rained for 40 days and 40 nights. On the 41st day, a weak sun broke through. I fell back to sleep and, confident of deliverance, dreamt of bright days ahead. An hour later, it was raining again. And on the 42nd and the 43rd …
The national mood (so I hear) matches the miserable conditions.
Witness the last few weeks: a Scottish aspirant attempts to knife his leader; the leader knifes his closest confidants; all of them haunted by the living ghost of the ‘Prince of Darkness’.
And here he is! Caught with pants down in the Epstein files. Over here, we have an actual prince, seen on all fours with same. And here they both are, shipping state secrets to the world’s most notorious sex offender.
The New Statesman asks: “Does this culture of national unhappiness sit upstream of politics, shaped by online forces … Or does this cultural ill-temper sit downstream of Westminster?”
There is an icy atmosphere in the halls of power.
Your correspondent is at the Palace of Westminster for Prime Minister’s Questions. We’re in line on a stone bench in a stone hall surrounded by stone busts, shivering through a soggy crossword in sodden shoes.
The man next to us is wearing a birthday ribbon. In so many centuries of occupation, the state is yet to devise an adequate heating solution.
The Palace is beset by heating failures, sewage horrors and hosts more rodents than representatives. Upstaged by recent events was the latest report on the cost of renovations: 60 years and £40 billion. Maybe next year …
A beige carpet staircase, more at home in a north shore deceased estate than a seat of government, leads to the public gallery. Below, sealed off by floor-to-ceiling plexiglass, members jostle and juke for spaces on the crowded benches.
The physical separation gives the impression of peering down at an enigmatic ritual in the zoo’s primate enclosure.
For 30 minutes, the Commons traverses ground from paedophiles to potholes and back to paedophiles again, via a brief excursus to murderous asylum seekers and commendable junior football teams.
The weekly half-hour compresses the fun, unlike Canberra’s test-length question time. MPs rattle off pre-written questions at an improbable pulse, while backbenchers bop up and down out of their seats, meerkat-like, hoping to be thrown a bone, and interjectors vie for the heartiest haw-haw of approval.
At the opposite end of the chamber, bumping elbows in an elaborate pew system, the press observe this unusual behavioural display with pen and notepad to hand, testing hypotheses, taking readings, measuring decibels.
The government benches, hitched to Keir Starmer’s presently-gurgling administration, are going through the motions, summoning up some grunts and growls.
The prime minister’s zinger delivery is out of cadence. Kemi Badenoch has her reduced ranks hissing, howling and cock-a-doodle-doing. The public gallery chortles away.
Only one joke really lands – the last question of the day. Independent Birmingham MP Ayoub Khan, whose constituents are suffering through a year-long bin strike, is seated directly behind Nigel Farage. He begins: “Mr Speaker, rubbish is building up right beneath my very nose …”
Yee-haw! Oi-oi!
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What to take away from this, besides one pair of gift-shop socks?
Is, as The New Statesman asks, this national unhappiness downstream from politics?
In the days after Prince Andrew and Peter Mandelson – the ‘Prince of Darkness’ – were arrested and questioned by police, something strange happened.
The pubs spilled out of doors; pale faces emerged into the streets; pedestrians slowed their pace and lifted their gaze.
The sun had come out.
The national mood, it turns out, is downwind of the weather. And so is mine!