MICHAEL DEACON
Throughout this hairtearing, spirit-squashing, nationally humiliating parade of cluelessness, there has been at least one Conservative politician who deserves respect. It’s Theresa May. No, I’m not talking about her deal. I’m talking about her character. Because – apart from that strange little display after Salzburg, in which she seemed to imagine she was delivering the decisive monologue in a very bad film about the Second World War – Mrs May has acted with dignity, composure, and class.
Which is more than you can say for the crew of charlatans plotting to depose her.
This is because the so-called “European Research Group” on the Conservative backbenches is stuffed with the most risible crowd of fantasists, crackpots and dunderheads to be found anywhere outside the comments section below a Youtube video about chemtrails. In the Commons on Thursday, these jabbering braggarts spent three solid hours rubbishing the Prime Minister and her proposed deal without once, any of them, explaining how they would have done it better. They’re terribly good, these people, at saying what they want: perfect control, immaculate sovereignty, trillionpound trade deals with Easter Island. But for some reason they always have precious little to say about how they, in the real world as opposed to their daydreams, would achieve it.
They seem to imagine that negotiating with the EU – an entity vastly bigger, richer and more powerful than the UK – is a doddle. It appears not to have occurred to them that Michel Barnier might actually be quite a difficult person to dupe. Perhaps the problem is the company they keep. After all, if the only people you regularly encounter in day-to-day political life are your fellow morons, then I suppose it’s only natural to assume that everyone else in politics must be a moron, too.
Honestly. What a farce it’s been. The whole benighted business. Just the memory of all those press conferences between Barnier and David Davis. It was as if we’d sent Mr Blobby to take on the Terminator. And now, would you believe it, this chortling idler has the brass neck to tell us that the deal would have been a soaring triumph if only everyone had listened to him. You remember David Davis. He’s the guy who promised us we could strike “a Uk-german deal” (impossible while Germany remains in the EU, which I suspect, going out on a limb here, it will continue to do). And he’s the guy who promised us that “within two years” of a Leave vote we could “negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU”, with the new trade deals “coming into force at point of exit”. How’s that coming on, Dr Fox? Allegedly there are people who now want Mr Davis to be prime minister. I suppose I can imagine backing him as a candidate, if I’d spent the past three years with my head in a bucket on Neptune’s outermost moon. Mrs May, thankfully, is far more considered, sensible and restrained than I am. Because personally, I think the most fitting punishment she could inflict on this shower of weasels would be to resign – and let them take charge.
See how they get on. And see how they enjoy the consequences, when the public finds out what they’ve done.
Crime fiction is the biggest literary genre by far. The book charts bulge with it. But why do we love it so much? What compels us to spend our evenings reading about murder, cruelty and evil?
I think it’s because it’s so comforting.
It is. Crime is cosy, and consoling. On Thursday night in London I attended a Q&A with two great crime writers, Ian Rankin and Lee Child, and they said much the same thing.
“It’s a very human instinct to love fear,” said Mr Child, “when really you know everything’s going to be all right.”
That’s the key to it. Everything’s going to be all right. You know from the off that no matter how gory and grim things get, and no matter how many bodies heap up, at the end of the story the mystery will be solved, good will prevail, and justice will be done. That’s what’s comforting about Mr Child’s books about Jack Reacher, a cartoonishly invincible ex-military cop, 6ft 5in tall, with biceps the size of basketballs. For all their violence, the Reacher stories make you feel safe. They’re reassurance for the frightened child inside. Reacher is a kind of fantasy big brother, who’s going to look out for you in the playground and enact cold-eyed vengeance on anyone who bullies you.
Real crime, of course, is entirely different from fictional crime. Mysteries remain unsolved, good fails to prevail, and justice doesn’t get done. And so naturally, for comfort, we pick up a thriller, and retreat into a world in which order is ultimately restored, every time, without fail. We read about crime, to forget about crime.
I like to think I set a good example to my son. But I’m not entirely sure.
Everywhere he’s been, for the past week or so, he’s brought along a certain toy. It’s a miniature travel version of Connect 4. Just a little rectangular piece of plastic, barely bigger than a matchbox.
But he doesn’t use it to play Connect 4 with anyone. He just holds it in his right hand, and taps it with his thumb.
“Dada!” he’ll chirp, without looking up, his eyes glued to the piece of plastic. “I’m sending a message to Mama!” Or: “Dada, I’m playing Fruit Ninja!”
He’s pretending it’s his very own phone. Obviously he’s never had an actual phone. But, for some strange reason, he’s taken to gripping this thing obsessively, staring at it as we walk down the street, and even playing with it in bed.
I wonder where he gets it from.