On the bright side, it’s not as bad as France, where the government may have to be bailed out by the IMF. There the tumbrils are rolling and the French Left is planning what looks like a general strike, with the fun slogan, “Bloquons tout” or ‘block everything’. Emmanuel Macron has been in office for eight years and it’s looking like his day is over.
Sir Keir Starmer has been prime minister for just over a year but already it feels like he’s over too. There’s talk – well, among my acquaintances – about unprecedented disaffection, an insurrectionary feeling, which is quite something for a nation that hasn’t managed a revolution since the seventeenth century (twice). I’ve been in Norfolk where a friend who was practically born into the Labour party is now voting green as a protest against Angela Rayner’s policy of overriding local objections to new housing developments – we drove past Barratt Home hoardings on what was agricultural land (Labour’s imposition of inheritance tax on farms means that many won’t survive).
