Monday
What a day to be alive in Westminster. The most eye-catching appointment in Rishi Sunak’s reshuffle was the improbable return of David Cameron. No 10 excitedly claimed later that the prime minister had been planning this since last Tuesday. In which case he allowed Suella Braverman to continue stoking division and hatred before last Saturday’s pro-Palestinian march. Not something I would want to boast about. But the resurrection of Big Dave was certainly a surprise. Not least because it rather implied that Sunak had searched through his database of 350 Conservative MPs and not found one capable of being foreign secretary. Cameron is having to be speedily elevated to the Lords to accommodate him in the cabinet. We don’t yet know if he will have to pass the Lords appointment commission; if so, he may struggle to explain his involvement in the Greensill lobbying scandal. His return is being heralded as a win for the blue-wall centrist wing of the party – if by that, you mean the posh boys. Cameron was the architect of austerity and tax cuts for the rich. Not that centrist. His foreign policy may also be out of line with Sunak. He wanted to stay in the EU and he’s a committed Sinophile. Still, Big Dave never held any position too tightly. That was part of his careless schtick. Let’s just hope he doesn’t go round the world suggesting a referendum in the Middle East. That would be bound to prolong the conflict. Not sure he’s going to be the vote-winner Sunak hopes.
Tuesday
Gutted to find that I was not invited to the launch of Nadine Dorries’s new book at the private member’s club, 5 Hertford Street, that features so prominently in The Plot. Only a few selected hacks were lucky to get the call-up, along with two former prime ministers, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss. Also present were just about every peer that Johnson created in his resignation honours list. A rabble of the failed and the undeserving. Including Charlotte Owen. No one, not even she, knows why she was made a lady. Johnson made a brief speech. One that he had clearly made no effort to write in advance. A stream of unconsciousness. Dorries had just written him a 350-page love letter and he had just burbled for five minutes. The story of all his relationships, I guess.
Dorries, though, was totally oblivious to the fact that the kindest reviews had written her off as a deranged fantasist. Rather she doubled down. She then told everyone at her launch that she still thoroughly deserved a peerage. Though she couldn’t say what for. Certainly not for services to literature. Or for services to TalkTV? Or for not knowing as culture secretary how Channel 4 was funded? There again if Cameron can become a lord, then why shouldn’t any of us?
Wednesday
I’m so glad I wrote about Spurs being top of the Premier League when I did. I had a feeling it wasn’t going to last for long. Sure enough, it all unravelled in a heartbeat as inside a week we managed to first lose 4-1 to Chelsea and then 2-1 to Wolves. The loss to Chelsea was almost heroic. Having gone 1-0 up early in the game, we then managed to have two players sent off and lost our best defender and midfielder to injury. I was following the Wolves game on the train on my way back from the wonderful Bridport literary festival. This game was more tragedy. Having been 1-0 up we looked like holding on for a bounceback win, only to concede twice in injury time. That was the sort of heartbreak we were inflicting on other teams earlier in the season. Weirdly though, the main feeling among my friends on Spurs chat groups is relief. The bad thing that we had all known was going to happen has now happened and we’re through the other side. And it’s all OK. We can forget the vertigo. Dispense with the anxiety of whether this would be the week when everything started to unravel. Now we can go back to our preferred reality. Normal service has been resumed. Football as it’s meant to be played. So long as you’re not too bothered about the result.
Thursday
It’s that time of the year. The time when millions of people have collective amnesia, lose their minds and tune in to ITV’s I’m a Celebrity. I did watch several episodes last year – I got hooked in by having to write about Matt Hancock’s ritual self-humiliation – but I suspect I’m not really the target market. This year Nigel Farage has been paid a reported £1.5m for his pre-Christmas stretch in the Australian jungle. Reality TV shows are a well-trodden route for desperate politicians to trouser some cash as they try to revive their public image. But it seldom if ever works. Did anyone say to themselves, “That George Galloway, he’s much nicer than I thought” after he appeared on Big Brother? Definitely not. If anything Galloway made himself ever more dislikable. Same with Edwina Currie, Nadine Dorries and Ann Widdecombe. All of whom appeared even weirder than imagined. As if all politicians are uniquely out of touch. Hancock most of all. The entitled, pompous neediness was hard to take. But Farage clearly thinks he can buck the trend. That his “man of the people casual racism” will make him a hero to millions of viewers. That he will come back a TV legend who will be welcomed back into the Tory party as it lurches further to the right. And if it doesn’t then at least he’s got enough dosh to sort out a new bank account. But shame on ITV for giving him the money and shame on ITV for giving a platform to such a divisive political figure on one of its highest-rated evening entertainment shows. Where the extreme can be normalised. Obviously the best thing you could do would be to give the show a swerve this year. Hit ITV where it hurts most. In the ratings. Tank the ad revenue. But if you must watch, at least be sure to send Farage home first. Don’t even vote for him to do bushtucker trials. Turn him into a nobody.
Friday
Huge congratulations to the Californian book club, who after 28 years’ hard slog, have finally made it to the end of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. The group would meet up once a month, initially in person, latterly on Zoom, and would read one – sometimes two – pages each session. This means they spent considerably longer reading the novel than Joyce took to write it. He spent 17 years agonising over the 628-page text, including a four-year spell of writer’s block, before dying less than two years after its publication in 1939. Whether the group has uncovered the mysteries of the experimental novel is anyone’s guess, as some academics refer to it as “gibberish” with no agreement on even who the characters are.
The writer left no clues about how he wanted the work to be understood. And I can’t help you. I’m too much of an intellectual lightweight to plough through a text that has defeated far cleverer people than me. If I were to read the book in its entirety I am confident I would be left with a feeling of total incomprehension and futility. Less the wiser than if I had attempted a theoretical physics paper on string theory. Maybe that was the effect Joyce had been hoping for all along. That he was creating an act of bewilderment. The subtext more a feeling than an idea. One in which no quarter was given. Not even an attempt to meet the reader halfway. I’m also fairly sure that a 28-year book group read wouldn’t help me that much. Not least because my memory isn’t that good. Even just a year in and I’d have forgotten how the book started and what I thought of it. Still, credit where credit’s due to the Californians. It must have been an adventure. And remarkably no one appeared to die in the process. For me, I will stick with the new Terry Hayes, The Year of the Locust. This is his first book since I Am Pilgrim – one of the best thrillers I’ve ever read – 10 years ago. I thought he too might have writer’s block. Let’s hope the new one is as good.
John Crace’s book Depraved New World (Guardian Faber, £16.99) is out now. To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy and save 18% at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
A year in Westminster: John Crace and Marina Hyde live in London and online
On Monday 11 December 8pm–9.30pm GMT, join John Crace, Marina Hyde and Pippa Crerar for a livestream discussion on another year of anarchy in British politics.
Book tickets here or at theguardian.live
