When the grandkids amaze

It was a good visit, I’d say. A successful bit of grandparenting. All made possible by the charm of Matilda and Elliott.

What made the difference on this occasion was, I feel, that I was communicating better with them than before, making the relationship much closer. That’s probably because, although I’m awkward with babies, Matilda’s now close to her third birthday and decidedly not a baby but a little girl. Actually, not that little, as my arms testify whenever I carry her any distance.

Matilda ready to slide

As for Elliott, he’s driven by a powerful urge to do everything his sister does – he was walking at ten months and walking well – which may explain why my relationship has deepened with him as it’s deepened with her. 

Whatever Matilda can do,
Elliott reckons he can do too

To be honest, it does occur to me that I’m coming up with arrant nonsense here. The change may all be in me and not at all in them. Over to you to choose the explanation you prefer.

Talking about how well Elliott walks, and now runs, reminds me of what has to be the most challenging but also the most amusing side of being with him. He’s fast. It’s no good saying “I’ll leave that door open just for a second or two while I fetch the thing I need” because he’ll be through it in a flash. Not that he goes through any door you leave open, only the ones that will take him somewhere dangerous or containing things we’d rather he didn’t touch. 

The same is true of climbing. Chairs, for instance. They’re obviously to climb up. And once climbed, they’re for standing on. From that commanding position, he then surveys, with the most charming of smiles, all the adults panicking at the prospect of his falling before they can get to him to lift him down.

Anyway, back to communication, now working better than ever. That includes the verbal form. I was delighted by how well Matilda understands everything I say. 

“No,” I told her on one occasion, “this shoe’s for the other foot.”

Without hesitation, she lowered the foot she’d raised and lifted the other. 

It’s a little more difficult when it comes to her replies. She’s getting Spanish at school and English at home. That somewhat slows progress in both. There’s much you can recognise – “¿Que es eso?” clearly means “what is this?”, and given the conviction with which she pronounces it, the presence of both question marks is clear; “Tilly did it” is equally comprehensible, and when I respond with congratulations, it’s as much for what she said as for what she did.

Then there are words with a Tilly meaning that I just have to learn. ‘Chicken’ for instance, turns out to mean ‘biscuit’. I might have avoided some heartache by providing her with one, which would have been easy, at a time when what I think of as chicken, was simply not an option. 

There’s plenty more like that. But, sadly, there are times when she launches into an extended speech not a word of which I can understand. It’s clearly entirely coherent to her, but perfectly incomprehensible to me. I like to respond in an encouraging way, so I tend to say “yes”, on the basis that this should be empowering and, frankly, while I may be theoretically committing to something I have no intention of doing, she’s fortunately not big enough yet to hold me to it.

What makes it awkward, though, is that during this visit she frequently responded to my “yes” with a meaningful pause and then, when it was clear I wasn’t going to do anything, simply repeated her demand. When that didn’t work, and she said it all again for the third time, I could hear a clear note of anger creeping into her voice, which just got me panicking.

Matilda on the rope bridge
It turns out not to be the breakthrough I imagined

She amazed me with several other areas of progress since my last visit. She walked across a rope bridge in a playground, with me holding her to prevent her falling. I was terribly proud and told Nicky, her father, my son, about it.

“She’s been doing that for ages,” Nicky laughed, puncturing my sense of achievement, “and doesn’t need any help.”

One of the activities that continues to appeal to her is going into the book exchange booth in the centre of the village. It seems to have been inspired by an old British telephone box, all panels of glass in red frames. She enjoys going in there and taking books down from the shelves. Elliott likes to join her and contributes with enthusiasm to this enthralling game.

Matilda enjoying the book exchange booth

Sadly, the books they select aren’t always the best suited to entertaining them. A Swedish language primer. An introduction to bookkeeping. A history of Spanish naval power. But then, they’re not about to read them, just to flick through the pages and then leave them on the floor. Naturally, for someone else to put back on the shelves. On several occasions, that ‘someone else’ was me. 

That wasn’t a problem, since they regularly insisted on my joining them in the booth, so I was right there to tidy up. The trouble was that, even in the relative freshness of the hills, it isn’t a lot of fun to be inside a structure which perfectly simulates a greenhouse, in a Spanish June.

Getting out was far from easy. Elliott’s just as determined as his sister on getting his way. More so, even. When they make it clear that they wish you stay as you try to get out of the broiling atmosphere in the booth, you’re left in little doubt of what they require. And, if you’re me, you give in.

Elliott exploring his environment

Elliott has also found a delightful game at mealtimes. Like his sister, he’s become a great explorer of the world around him. The effect of gravity has become a focus recently. Whether it’s bits of food or a plastic spoon or plastic dish, he finds great interest in how they move towards the floor when he drops them from his highchair. Increasingly often, he helps gravity in its work, by flinging them downwards. It’s impressive to see how his throwing arm has developed a strength that would impress a professional cricketer.

One of the effects of this is that the grandparently duty of washing up now includes extensive cleaning around Elliott’s chair. That enhances the sensation of having done a real job, and not some trivial little task, when you’ve finished.

Elliott and Matilda ready to ride
and showing how other things can be done in the wagon

Finally, I greatly enjoyed the wagon. We’ve moved on from the sophisticated two-level, two-seat buggy the kids used before. Now we’re travelling in a green plastic wagon. It cost approximately one fortieth of the price of the buggy. But it’s clearly far more fun, and the envy of all Matilda and Elliott’s friends. Go to a playground and leave the wagon standing alone for a few minutes, and you’ll find kids in it being pushed around by other kids. A source of joy for all involved.

Proof that it isn’t always money that most reliably buys happiness.

See? I learned a useful lesson. While having fun with the grandchildren.

A highly successful visit. 

Elliott raring to go

The leaders we deserve

It’s often said that we get the leaders we deserve. In which case, I wonder what particularly deadly offences we must have committed to deserve the ones we have these days. And the people they appoint over us to make our lives harder.

Take the US Supreme Court, for instance. Six of the learned judges on that court just made it easier for States to ban legal abortions, just two days after they struck down a New York law that made it marginally less easy to carry firearms in public. In other words, they decided that protecting the rights of unborn children took precedence over gun control, which might go some way to help protect those already born.

Protestors in favour of keeping abortion legal

Or, putting it another way, they feel that the right to bear arms trumps the right to have your kids come home from school safely.

And, if you think my use of the word ‘trumps’ there is an inadvertent pun, think again. I know who appointed the judges who produced this lamentable majority. Nothing inadvertent about that pun.

Also, I deliberately said that the decision would make it easier to make abortion illegal. It won’t make it possible to ban abortion. Experience around the world shows that abortion isn’t something you can ban. All you can ban is legal abortion. There will still be abortions, but they will be illegal, and dangerous.

So the abortion decision will cost lives.

Learning from that worldwide experience, however, means accepting evidence. And for many, we live in an age of faith in which evidence counts for nothing. Especially if it comes from other countries.

That’s why large numbers of US voters can’t bring themselves to understand that it’s no coincidence that Britain brought in stringent gun controls in 1996, and hasn’t had a school shooting since.

That’s another refusal of evidence that’s costing lives.

We need better leaders. Which brings me to the subject of the French parliamentary elections. Danielle and I both voted in them. She was born French, and through our marriage, I took out the nationality twenty years ago, as an insurance policy against the British being dumb enough to leave the EU. You can probably imagine how pleased I am I did that now. 

What was particularly striking about the French elections is that nearly 54% of the electorate stayed away from the polls. That’s because the options were pretty dire. Voters could go for President Macron’s centrists, whose last five years in power have produced far more disappointment than achievement. Alternatively, there was a hard right, hostile to the EU and frighteningly sympathetic to Vladimir Putin. Or there was a hard left, hostile to the EU and, in its opposition to NATO, depressingly helpful to Vladimir Putin.

It’s perhaps no surprise that a majority of the French population decided that none of the options available was attractive and rejected all of them.

Meanwhile, in Britain we’ve had two by-elections last Thursday. 

Tiverton and Honiton produced an astonishing result. A conservative MP with a majority of 24,000 lost the seat to a Liberal Democrat. That’s the biggest ever turnover in a British by-election.

Seven or eight years ago, I got into a lively discussion with a couple of Liberal Democrats about their party’s decision to join a coalition government with the Conservatives. I warned them that the party would be crushed at the next election and it might take a generation for it to recover. They thought it was worth it, just to have some Liberal Democrat influence in government for at least one parliament.

Well, there’s little trace of any Lib Dem beneficial influence on the Conservatives. Twelve years of Tory rule have left public services on life support, and an economy facing desperate times, made worse by the colossal and Tory-engineered error of Brexit. As for the Lib Dems, they were indeed crushed at the next election, going from 57 seats to just eight.

Still, Tiverton and Honiton, and two previous by-election turnovers against the Tories, suggest the Lib Dems may be making a comeback rather earlier than I’d imagined back then.

In part, that’s down to the incompetence and corruption of the Johnson government. 

Those were factors in the other by-election, in Wakefield. This was an important gain for Labour, the main Opposition party, which lost so many of its seats in what was once its heartland in the North. That was called the ‘Red Wall’ of seats, which included Wakefield, where it was said that a monkey with a red (Labour) rosette would win. Boris Johnson breached that wall in a string of wins in the 2019 election, under the slogan ‘Get Brexit Done’. It probably doesn’t help him that he spectacularly hasn’t got Brexit done, and what bits he has got done, are delivering none of the benefits promised, and are indeed doing a great deal of harm. 

Labour will take heart from winning back Wakefield. It certainly has no chance of ousting the Conservatives if it can’t reverse most or all its losses in the old Red Wall.

There is, however, a subtext in Wakefield. Turnout was just 39.09%. That’s not that unusual for by-elections, but with the Tories failing so badly, Labour ought to have enthused more voters. After all, in Tiverton and Honiton, turnout was 53.1%, which at least represented a majority of registered voters.

In Wakefield, abstention did better than all the actual candidates put together.

It seems that Labour isn’t inspiring anything like the kind of enthusiasm it needs.

If we get the leaders we deserve, then we must have sinned grievously, to be stuck with characters who leave voters so disenchanted. Let’s hope that changes soon, because otherwise we’ll find more powerful figures laying about them, destroying any freedom they feel the rest of us don’t deserve.

If you’re not sure that’s right, but you’re not one of those people who discount evidence as the basis of opinion, then just look at what the US Supreme Court has been doing.

We need to start finding leaders that are honest, principled and competent. But they need something more. They need the spark that gets abstentionists off their couches and back to the polls. 

The kind of spark that stops people thinking that the right choice for them is ‘none of the above’.

The end of modernity: when is it due?

Here’s a question that’s been troubling me for a while. It’s about modernity. When does it end, exactly?

I mean, in principle we know when it starts. Technically, it’s now, isn’t it? Modernity is about the present.

But just when does it stop being modern? 

In any case, the notion that it starts now isn’t quite right, in practice, because modernity lasts a while. Which means it started before now. I mean, modern times probably include the war in Iraq and Obama’s presidency, don’t they? Eighteenth-century specialists, of which I was once one, reckon the modern era started back then, with what we call the Enlightenment. 

Oh, wow. Enlightenment. In the age of Trump and Putin, doesn’t that conjure up a sense of nostalgia?

Why, even fashion, which has to be about the most ephemeral of human preoccupations, lasts at least a season, and since it takes a year for a season to come around again, that might mean it lasts a whole year. Except, of course, that no true fashionista would be caught wearing last summer’s swimming garb while on this summer’s beach.

Actually, fashion can even last longer than that. There are things called ‘timeless fashions’. I don’t really know how long ‘timeless’ is supposed to be in this context, but I reckon it must be up to two or three years at least. An eternity in that world.

But here’s the bit I don’t get. When will modern art stop being called modern art?

Salvador Dalí's Figure at a window

I mean, take a piece I particularly like, such as Salvador Dalí’s Figure at a Window. The model, one he used several times in the 1920s, is his sister Anna Maria. It’s a wistful painting, calm and but suffused with beauty, using the shadiness inside the room as just the framework needed for the light outside.

It dates from 1925.

Somehow, with its near-realist treatment of the subject, you might wonder whether it’s truly modern art. But Dalí is generally regarded as an outstanding figure of the movement. In any case, to be fair, this painting's not entirely realist. I freely admit that I didn’t spot this until it was pointed out to me, but the window has only one casement: the one on the left is missing, and the other one wouldn't on its own close the window. Dalí sacrificed strict realism to structure, to the aesthetic balance of the whole composition. And he was right, because it works.

Figure at a Window hangs not far from another painting in the Reina Sofía Museum in Madrid, one that belongs much more obviously to the modern-art idiom. That’s A World, by Ángeles Santos. 

A World by Ángeles Santos

She also painted another favourite of mine, The Gathering, which I wrote about in another post.

The Gathering, also by Ángeles Santos

What attracts me most in her work is the verve and originality with which she painted before Franco seized power and established his dictatorship. From then until the end of her life, she went back to far more conventional painting, talented but without the extraordinary power of A World. So much is happening in that huge picture, done when she was still only 17, full of movement and purpose, of busy-ness and energy. You look at the detail and you can see what’s going on in each area and yet, taken together, it’s entirely surrealist (look at the train running into the tunnel, in the lower left segment of the central portion: are those really railway tracks running out?).

It's dated 1929. Just four years after the Dalí. And only fifteen after a series of paintings that bowled me over when I first saw them at the age of 16, in 1969. By Claude Monet, they form his Water Lilies of 1914. They hang in specifically designed rooms in the basement of the Orangerie museum in Paris, so that you can stand and be surrounded by them. They helped me understand the word ‘Impressionist’: I had the impression of being inside a lily pond, but without getting wet. 

Claude Monet, Water Lilies at sunset
Part of the Water Lilies series

Impressionism is definitely a nineteenth-century movement, even if these particular paintings were done in the twentieth. 

But only fourteen years later, in 1925, Dalí produces Figure at a Window that is officially ‘modern’, even though, striking as it is, it still feels far more conventional than, say, the pride of the Reina Sofía museum’s collection, Picasso’s Guerníca. 

Pablo Picasso, Guerníca

Even more to the point, when I first saw Monet's Water Lilies, they were 55 years old. And not considered modern. Guerníca is now 85 years old. A World is 93 years old. Figure at a Window is 97 years old.

So here’s my question: how come they’re modern when The Water Lilies already weren’t, over half a century ago? Back then, the Monet was a lot more recent than those other three are now. 

Is it time to come up with a different name for the art of that period?

Formerly Modern Art? Doesn’t have much of a ring to it, does it? And can you imagine New York’s world-famous Museum of Modern Art, MoMA, becoming MoFMA?

Do you perhaps have a better suggestion?

 

Handing on the baton. Now transformed into a paint brush

The heavy burden of high office, which I mentioned a while back was weighing me down, has at last been lifted from my shoulders.

Last week saw the end of my stint as President of the Community of homeowners at Los Sauces, in La Cañada, which belongs to the municipality of Paterna, in the Spanish autonomous community of Valencia. Los Sauces means the Willows, and if there’s a willow to be seen anywhere in La Cañada, I’ve yet to spot it.

Please don’t tell me you’ve never heard of Los Sauces. That would only mean that you haven’t been following this fine blog, written with great care and considerable pains only for your entertainment and edification. I admit you may never have heard of it anywhere else, but here at least you have no excuse for not knowing about it. 

As for Paterna, if you don’t know it, I can only point you to the latest remarkable film by the outstanding Spanish director, Pedro Almodóvar, Pain and Glory. In it, Almodóvar brings together stars he made famous, in particular Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas. Almodóvar assures us the film is not at all autobiographical, which is why he shot much of it inside his own apartment in Madrid.

He also has Antonio Banderas playing a film director who feels deeply distressed about the fact that his favourite actor, now back in Spain, left to pursue a career in Hollywood many years back. Funnily enough, by pure coincidence, Almodóvar is a film director who got very upset when Antonio Banderas cleared off to Hollywood years back to pursue a career there before returning to Spain.

I hope that makes clear that the film is hardly autobiographical at all.

The director (that’s the character, not the one who made the film) has flashbacks to his life as a child, living in a cave. An attractive, airy cave, with plenty of light. But still a cave.

That cave, along with many more like it, some still inhabited, is in Paterna. And if you don’t think the municipal council of Paterna has worked to death the use of one of its caves in an Almodóvar film, then you know nothing of the marketing urges of local government.

So there’s the setting for you. 

As I explained last time, my time as president has been dominated by work repairing the communal swimming pool. That at times involved me making two or three phone calls a day to the contractors we took on for the job. You know the kind of thing. “You said, ‘complete by Thursday’ and it’s Friday today. With no progress. When will you be showing up?”

I kept going around a cycle that ran from promise to hope to disappointment only to start off again with a promise.

Fortunately, the presidency of Los Sauces isn’t one of those hotly contested offices for which people are prepared to lay out time and money to see themselves appointed. Indeed, it isn’t even elective. If it were elective, it would be hard to find candidates to run. So, instead, the post passes from house to house, with no option offered to the next unfortunate resident.

Isabel, my worthy and dedicated successor

It was with joy that I handed over to my unfortunate neighbour Isabel when my term ended. The work on the swimming pool wasn’t totally complete. There are some finishing touches to be done, and as always with the kind of inadequate outfit we had sadly taken on, there was cleaning still to carry out. But the pool’s full of water, two months later than hoped, but still full and entirely usable. Indeed, with the heat we’ve been having, the water is now at a temperature where even I, who can’t bear getting into a cold swimming pool, can simply stroll down the steps into the water with barely a hesitation as the level moves higher and higher up my body.

But my joy grew still further when I saw the enthusiasm with which Isabel was throwing herself into the task. In particular, there was ironwork which had been allowed simply to keep rusting for many presidencies (including my own). She was out there at 6:30 in the morning scraping and painting. It had to be that early, since by 9:30 the temperature’s already well on its way to the 30-degree level it reaches regularly these days (and that’s 30 degrees in real money, none of that Fahrenheit nonsense) (well, OK, if you have to have it converted, 86 degrees).

A great job. And undertaken by the President

I’m impressed by the way the gate looks. And I’m impressed that the work was done by the President. I’m a fan of the philosophy that says, “if a job’s worth doing, it’s not beneath me to do it”. I would have loved to have more bosses in my long and patchy career seeing things that way. I’ve repeatedly got tired of people who regard themselves above the tiresome daily tasks we mere mortals have to carry out.

I’m glad our president is setting us an excellent example.

In the meantime, Danielle and I are celebrating my release by spending some time away from La Cañada with its 30-degree temperatures. Instead, we’re cat-sitting in Madrid for one of our sons who, with his partner, is now on holiday in Greece.

However, Madrid being Madrid, that only means we’re now enjoying temperatures of around 40 degrees (OK, OK, 104). Without our fine, newly-repaired swimming pool. Thoughts of which are more than ever attractive.

How six swallows are making our summer

One swallow, they say, doesn’t make a summer.

A whole bunch do, on the other hand. Especially since they turned up just as our rather grim spring was coming to an end and clear skies were taking over from the rain. From our first sighting of them, dipping into the river, as they do to scoop a little water to drink, it was only a matter of days before we had our own visitors again – and with them, the warm weather.

Let me say at once that I referred to them last year as house martins. Which are relatives of the swallows. But in fact, it seems, our yearly visitors really are swallows and not house martins at all.

When the fledgelings were small –
a parent dealing with their demands

We have a well-appointed nest under the roof affair over our porch. It’s been there for years, so in swallow terms it must have some of the prestige of a grand old stately home back in England. Perhaps a chateau on the Loire in France.

People have suggested to me that swallows come back to the same nest year after year. Well, I don’t know. Maybe they do. But the behaviour of the swallows in what I like to think of as ‘our’ nest tends to be so different from year to year, that I find it hard to imagine that it’s the same tenants each time.

What we think happens when they first show up is that they inspect desirable properties in the area. Not actually starting with an estate agent’s window, but in all other respects, like any couple (they tend to be in couples) looking for a home in a neighbourhood they’ve just moved to (or, in their case, returned to).

Just as with human homebuyers in a seller’s market, they then get into disputes. They argue. They get quite fierce with each other. They shout a bit and, let me tell you, when a swallow’s shouting, you know about it. Eventually, though, somebody gets in and occupies the place, and that’s it. The message goes out to the rest of the community. You didn’t get your offer in on time, or it wasn’t convincing enough, and now the place is theirs.

The lighter bits show the extent of this year’s extension

That’s how our visitors this year got their nest. And then they behaved just like new homeowners anywhere. They’d no sooner moved in than they engaged in some serious house improvements, extending the nest upwards a fair bit. They got the work completed in a surprisingly short time. But then, this pair seemed rather bigger and, I suspect, stronger than the ones we’ve met in the past.

Once they got down to the serious business of adding to the swallow population, we understood why the extension had been necessary. These two weren’t going to make do with just two fledgelings, or even three. Nothing short of four would do for them.

No wonder they needed the extra nursery space.

Six swallows right over our front door. It was great fun, with only one downside: there’s rather a lot of what I suppose we can call ‘guano’ deposited under the nest. We put down sheets of cardboard to catch the droppings, but this year we did have to change them rather more often than in the past.

As before, they weren’t at all pleased at our insistence on continuing to live in the bit of the house we consider our home, as opposed to theirs. That’s the bit behind the nest. Above all, they resented our refusal to stop using the front door. This year’s swallows are significantly bolder than last year’s (see what I mean about probably not being the same ones?). On several occasions, we’ve each had a swallow diving down over our heads, nearly colliding with us, and then shooting up to the edge of the nest to land on it, with that perfect timing that means they reach their perch just as their flight ends. Though, in some cases when their boldness ran out, they didn’t complete the journey, but flew off again instead.

On one occasion, the same swallow – parent, I assume, bringing food back to the fledgelings – tried to get past me three times. I must have been too close to the nest, because each time it turned and flew away again. Then it perched on a telephone cable overheard and chattered at me. Again, let me stress that when a swallow’s chattering at you, you know you’ve been chattered at.

I’m no more fluent in Swallow than I was in the past, but I’m certain I was being told I was a complete oaf – if not something worse – and had no business standing there looking threatening, right by the nest, so would I please go away? Well, I say ‘go away’, though I think the real request was being phrased in the Swallow equivalent of some much saltier Anglo-Saxon expression. 

Fledgelings nearly ready to fly
Trust me, there really is a fourth

It’s been fun having them and we’ve enjoyed it. And, if you’re surprised at my use of the past tense, that’s only because the fledgelings are now leaving the nest during the day and only coming back at night. I’m sure it won’t be long before they literally fly the nest for good. 

Then the big question will be, will the parents pull off the same trick another pair managed a couple of years ago, and have a second clutch?

We await their decision with suspenseful excitement. And, if you’re as keen to know as we are, don’t worry. I’ll be sure to keep you fully up to date.

A great escapologist turns into a lame duck

He’s pulled it off again! Boris Johnson, the great escape artist, has ducked being sacked by his own party’s MPs. Enough called for a vote of no confidence for the Conservative parliamentary party to have to hold one, but not enough voted to get him dumped.

Johnson may well be just a bit tired...
He’s clung on to his job, but weakened. A lame duck

He does, however, emerge from the battle badly damaged. After all, 148 of his parliamentary colleagues voted for him to go. It’s fascinating to imagine them talking to their constituents at the next general election. 

“Vote for me! Vote Conservative!” they’ll be saying.

“What?” will come the voter’s reply, “and put back into Downing Street the man that you voted to throw out?”

To be fair, I always had ambivalent feelings about the vote. I mean, it’s a terrible blot on all of us, damaging to our reputation abroad but also making it hard to have a reasonable sense of pride in our country, that we tolerate the level of rottenness Johnson has inflicted on Britain.. Clearly, seeing Johnson fired would have been a major benefit for the country generally, a kind of cleansing.

It would have been the Conservative Party pouring a powerful drain cleaner down the grate, instead of just adding to the sewage as it has for years.

On the other hand, Johnson, once a major electoral asset for the Tory Party, is now a colossal liability. In less than three weeks, there’s going to be a by-election in Wakefield, a constituency in Labour’s former ‘Red Wall’, through which Johnson drove a bulldozer at the last general election, in 2019. It’s the kind of seat Labour absolutely has to win back if it is to have a chance of forming a government again.

Well, no opinion poll is worth as much as the real poll on election day, but the latest survey in Wakefield shows Labour 20 points ahead. Just because opinion polls aren’t always reliable, that doesn’t mean victory’s in the bag, of course. It is, however, at the very least encouraging.

Make no mistake about it, if Labour does indeed win back the seat, a huge part of that success will be down to Johnson, the millstone around the Tories’ neck.

This all means that, had Johnson lost the confidence vote, I’d have felt a sense of relief for Britain in having seen the pool of corruption he created at Downing Street finally flushed down the drain. On the other hand, I’d have regretted the departure of a Tory leader perhaps easier for Labour to beat than pretty well any other. And just as Britain needs to cleanse itself of the Johnson gang, so it needs to free itself of Tory government more generally too.

This sorry crowd has been in power for ten years and has achieved nothing of value. The teaching profession is in crisis. The National Health Service, which they inherited from Labour in 2010 in the most vigorous state it’s ever enjoyed since it was founded three-quarters of a century ago, is stumbling towards its grave. Housing, despite yearly promises to build huge numbers of new homes, is unable to keep up with need. The judicial system can’t handle the pressure on it. Why, even the police, and the Tories have always promoted themselves as the party of law and order, is far too short of resources to cope. 

The need for a Labour government has never been more acute. That might make the Tories’ decision to remain saddled with a damaged, lame-duck leader, now an electoral liability, rather a good thing for Britain in the longer run. In a perverse way, mind you, not the way Tory MPs may have intended, since it might well be the very boost Labour needs to win the next election and kick the Tories into the long grass. 

Take another of the supposed achievement of the Tories. One of which many of their number, and Johnson in particular, are proud. That’s getting Britain out of the European Union. Which only makes it all the more fascinating to see one of their MPs, Tobias Ellwood, already calling for Britain to rejoin the Single Market. 

That’s the arrangement that allows free trade between European nations. It has regulations concerning product standards, but it does not require full EU membership. Norway is a member of the Single Market, without being a full member of the EU.

Ellwood has called for radical thinking to “energise our economy through these stormy waters”. Britain is facing a cost-of-living crisis, and Ellwood thinks joining the Single Market would help. He also points to some specific areas of concern. 

Fishing and farming, for instance, that Brexiters claimed would hugely benefit from leaving the EU, are in reality facing terrible difficulties. And there is a currently insurmountable problem in relations between Northern Ireland which, as part of the UK, has left the EU, and the Republic of Ireland, which hasn’t. 

“All these challenges would disappear,” Ellwood claims, “if we dare to advance our Brexit model by rejoining the EU single market (the Norway model).”

He’s entirely right. Leaving the Single Market was a catastrophic error. We should get back in.

But here’s the problem. It’s those regulations I mentioned before, the ones governing the Single Market. If we were to rejoin, we’d become, as opponents have often pointed out, rule-takers rather than rule-makers. We really ought to have a say in what the rules are.

Of course, that’s an easily resolved problem. We only need to rejoin the full EU. That would give us the say we need. So Ellwood is right about the need to get back into the Single Market; he just needs to take the next, obvious step and call for us to reverse Brexit altogether.

See what I mean? Twelve years in, the Tories have a track record of no achievements and a great deal of damage. Brexit was part of that damage. Ellwood has, in effect, admitted as much. In many ways, that makes Johnson the perfect symbol of everything they’ve done since 2010. Incompetence and disappointment – yep, that’s not just Johnson, it’s the trail of destruction of twelve years of Tory government.

Tonight, Conservative MPs had the chance to dump him. They bottled it. But at least that leaves a hopeless, damaged, lame duck leader likely to be taking the Tories into the next election, at the head of a deeply divided party. 

Our principal need remains as strong as ever. Which is not just dumping Johnson, but getting the Tories out of Downing Street altogether.

Tory MPs may just have made Labour’s job a bit easier.