At what point, as you consider the prime minister’s shortcomings more in sorrow than in anger, as you size up likely successors and try to wonder, idly, whose wallpaper we’re on in Downing Street, do you start to think that you, the electorate, are the problem? If Keir Starmer falls on his sword, we’ll be on to our sixth prime minister in seven years. “The first five guys were just the wrong five guys” starts to sound like the kind of thing Liza Minnelli would say, called upon to account for a life of torch songs. It’s the kind of thing Italy would say. Doesn’t there come a point in every electorate’s life that it has to splash some cold water on its face?
I think this is more or less where the grownups are landing, on the question of our present turmoil. Starmer is reportedly readying his MPs to vote down any prospective sleaze inquiry, which should be pretty straightforward, given the size of his majority. Finally, the guy discovers what his landslide is for: preventing a parliamentary process identical to the one he himself used to bring the last guy down. Sorry, the last guy but two. Seriously, people, if we reject all this, we make ourselves ungovernable, consign ourselves to the civic equivalent of a life on the shelf, always questing after some fresh bureaucrats, only to tear them apart when things get ugly.
