Bang goes season of peace and goodwill

You will have to forgive me if this week’s column seems a trifle unhinged — insert your own joke here — but I’m writing from the refuge of my son’s bedroom, since it’s the only place I can hear myself think.

Downstairs, two nice gentlemen are in the process of removing the doors and windows on the front of the house and replacing them with new ones made out of something more akin to steel girders.

This is because, not to put too fine a point on it, my husband, Michael Gove, is now considered a serious security hazard.

In fairness that’s often been the case, especially when let loose in a second-hand book shop with a credit card, or when frying sausages. But tensions in public life being what they are, we have to take these threats very seriously.

other MPs are doing the same, not out of choice but out of necessity. So it’s goodbye to our lovely old sash windows, and hello reinforced panes, triple bolts, panic buttons and CCTV.

Such is the price of politics. Hopefully it’s not just the fanatics it will help keep at bay. While we’re here, can whoever it is throwing eggs at my front door please stop: it’s a b **** r to clean. And as for the kind donations of dog mess on our doorstep, please be aware that the only ones you are upsetting are our dogs, who find this invasion of their territory deeply distressing.

Now we’ve got a December General Election, the entire British public must also be feeling somewhat exasperated, too.

The run-up to Christmas is exhausting enough, what with school plays, negotiating the dreaded ocado delivery slot, deciding which overpriced turkey to plump for, frantic trips to the Post office to collect errant presents, arbitrating between warring relatives, sourcing Christmas trees, unearthing ancient decorations, wrapping fiddly things, and all the other stresses that accompany this allegedly magical time of year.

Now we must also brace ourselves for more shouting, the inevitable TV debates, snowdrifts of pamphlets, incessant canvassers, not to mention the pantomime of having to watch Diane Abbott trying to explain Labour’s economic policy.

And all because the people we chose to lead us at the last General Election can barely agree what day of the week it is, let alone set aside their differences long enough to reach a compromise on implementing the result of the referendum.

Apart from three people on Twitter, the last thing anyone with even a modicum of sanity remaining wants for Christmas is an election.

As gifts go, it’s up there with novelty socks or miniature cheesegraters on the list of things no one needs any more of, ever. A load of grown men and women squabbling over who gets to be the fairy on the Christmas tree.

Meanwhile, everyone’s lives are riven with conflict at a time of year that’s meant to be all about love and forgiveness but which, this year, will carry the very real threat of the wrong man with a beard descending down our chimneys.

Admittedly I probably feel this more than most. For politicians, the prospect of a General Election may feel like all their Christmasses come at once. Yet again, It’s All About Them.

But for their families it’s not so straightforward. I’m used to being a political widow, but even I have never experienced such a relentless period of pressure.

one of the few remaining joys of Christmas — now the whole thing has been hijacked by Black Friday, Amazon and the global titans of greed — is the absence of politics. For a few blissful weeks each year it all stops, and life is all about family, friends, food and not much else.

Now politics is going to dominate the brief window which, for some at least, is still considered sacred. Perhaps the answer is another extension. Not to Brexit (that’s already had more extensions than Victoria Beckham); but to Christmas itself. Because the coming weeks will make those petty family squabbles over who gets the last of the purple Quality Street sweets seem tame by comparison.