Political Parties as Weather Systems

Whilst delirious from coronavirus*, I suddenly got to wondering. You know those team building sessions where you're asked to imagine yourself as a fruit, or your organisation as a species of fish? Me neither. But in these weather - saturated times, what meteorological form do our political parties take?

Conservative Party - A large, prolonged and blustery shower
Labour Party - A turbulent front, breaking up around the Middle East.
Labour Party Brexit Policy - Fog
Liberal Democrats - Hail (small, hits you hard for a while then melts away)
Scottish National Party - A biting Northerly wind.
Democratic Unionist Party - Heavy weather

*or standing up too quickly on an empty stomach

Tim Farron, Voice of Reason

Very good piece by Tim Farron in the Express, on Parliamentary prayers, Christian faith and liberalism. Here's a clip:

Whilst I don’t believe that my Christian faith is simply a matter of personal preference but rather a belief in something that is true, I also believe it is my duty as an MP, a Christian and a Liberal Democrat to be utterly committed to the freedom of others who hold different positions. To impose my faith on someone else does no good.  Christianity is, I would argue, an unequalled force for good, but when it becomes deployed as a political tool it can be the source of much that is far from good.

However, many Christians that I speak to feel absolutely no sense of privilege in their position. Rather than having the biggest platform and a rubber-stamped loud hailer, many Christians today feel marginalised. In reality the UK establishment acts as though the state religion is Atheism.  The default position when it comes to decision making in government circles, in the media and in our wider culture, is to assume that the absence of faith is the neutral and agreed position. Of course, it is *sort of* OK to have a religious faith and to think something different to the mainstream, but the assumption is that this makes you at best a bit whacky, and at worst downright unpleasant.  

and he concludes

...true diversity is about accepting that others are different to you, not by seeking to enforce a sanitised assimilation. If we are going to exist alongside one another with our hodgepodge of backgrounds and opinions it is not going to be neat. It is going to be messy and uncomfortable, and to need compromise and understanding.

Election Misdirection

Its a common tactic of magicians to use misdirection - get the audience's attention on one thing so that the real trick can be executed elsewhere.

This is a misdirection election. Directly after winning a Commons vote on his Brexit deal, Boris Johnson dissolved Parliament. Why? Because his only way of winning an election was to pitch the Conservatives as the Brexit Party, knowing that the Remain vote would be split and leaderless.

Take Brexit out, and who would win? Without 'Get Brexit Done', what else have the Conservatives had to say? Vague stuff about unleashing potential, statistically false claims about hospitals and nurses, and restoring police numbers to almost what they were pre-austerity.

Beyond that, as if reflecting the fact they have very little else to say, the Conservatives have disappeared from everything except their own staged events. Andrew Neil is the tip of the iceberg, they have systematically avoided interviews, debates and phone-ins throughout the campaign, Victoria Derbyshire noting this morning that following a month of daily requests not one cabinet minister has ever been put up to appear on her morning TV/radio discussion. People who avoid scrutiny have something to hide.

Labours use of the NHS has a big whiff of misdirection about it too, the documents released mid-term don't really prove its up for sale. Yes it's underfunded and stretched to breaking point, but like the Tories, Labour see in the NHS their own giant trump card that just about hides the other weaknesses in their hand.

This Sunday, Anglicans will hear of John the Baptists question from prison 'are you the one, or should we expect someone else?' Expecting a Jesus bringing judgement and upheaval, instead John suffers the limitations of the Herodian prison system whilst the hoped for Judeaxit from the Roman Empire is nowhere to be seen. Jesus reply: open your eyes. Notice what is happening - to the blind, the lame, the poor, the deaf, the excluded. The good news is coming first to the people nobody reports on.

Open your eyes. Don't follow the magic show. Notice what is happening to the poor, the disabled, the excluded, the hungry. Notice what is happening that politicians never talk about, in the very foundations of our society in families, parenting, culture, values. Notice the things that don't come down to money, and numbers of people employed to do x or y. Love, justice, the planet, kindness, truth. Notice the people that don't register - asylum seekers, food bank users, children in the care system, the isolated elderly, the people affected by UK foreign policy, the anxious and depressed.

Once you've seen how the trick works, its not magic. Turn away from it, and the daily insistence for the last month that this is all we should be noticing. What else do you see and hear? What else do you notice? If you remove the magic trick from the show, what else becomes important instead?

And please vote tomorrow.

Linguistic Slack

What word can we use today?

15 men from Preston Plucknett, at the time a village of just a few hundred, died in the first world war. 232 men and women from Yeovil died in the 2 wars combined. And that is a drop in the ocean compared to the (literally) countless millions who died across the globe. We simply don't know, it could be 100 million, a few million more, or a few million less.

How do we describe that? Many vicars and service leaders today will be turning to poetry, and all of us will be turning to silence.

Language tends to get hyper-inflated during an election campaign. Add that to our growing culture  of conversing in feelings and interpretations (usually highly personal ones), and that's a toxic brew for anyone who values meaning.

In his TED talk 'How to speak so that other people will want to listen', Julian Treasure asks 'Exaggeration: it demeans our language - if I see something that really is awesome, what do I call it?' A few years earlier, Jesus put it this way: "Let your yes be yes, and let your no be no, anything beyond this comes from the evil one". Embroidering our language, exaggerating for effect, ultimately renders language useless. God is a communicating God, his first act is to speak creation into being, and part of being in God's image is the ability to communicate. Without truthful, clear language, communication, and ultimately relationships, are impossible.

Remembrance Sunday reminds us of lots of things. Maybe it reminds us too to leave ourselves some linguistic slack. Whatever we are tweeting our response to, whatever x or y is supposed to have said or done which cuts across our interests or personal space, it is minor compared to 100 million deaths. We cannot use the same language about it, or its perpetrators. For example, you aren't a fascist or a Stalinist, you're just someone who thinks the state should be slightly less, or slightly more, involved in taxation and spending.

Lets rediscover adjectives which de-escalate strife, rather than those which amplify it. The Great British Understatement deserves a comeback, because there are only a few things which are truly worthy of our most extreme language, and fewer still to which the only true response is silence.

Doctored

I find it impossible to believe that the video of Keir Starmer was doctored within hours of it being originally broadcast. I tried to get doctored last week and the first available appointment was December 4th.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/politics/james-cleverly-defends-doctored-video-of-keir-starmer-in-fiery-exchange-with-piers-morgan-on-good-a4279796.html

Breaking: Brexit Causes National Outrage Shortage

Expert in psychopolitics Dr Pavlov Kneejerk today sounded the alarm over the UK's national stock of outrage. "There is a danger of a serious shortage" declared Dr Kneejerk. "Until this week, there was a chance we had enough national outrage to share between child poverty, knife crime, food banks, global warming, the growing divide between the wealthy and the poor, and Brexit, whilst leaving a small percentage free for taking offence at complete strangers on social media."

But recent events have run national outrage levels dangerously low. "A sudden and disproportionate flow of outrage can seriously affect storage capacity" said Dr Kneejerk. The huge response to the prorogation of Parliament, which will result in the loss of only 4 days of Parliamentary time (9-12th September, as they do very little on Friday and Parliament was then due to close for 3 weeks for the Conference season), has led to emergency efforts to source additional outrage from new sources.

"There is a simple solution", offered Dr Kneejerk. "All it would take is an offer from Jo Swinson or Jeremy Corbyn to cancel their party conferences, which would free up a week of time for MPs, and would rebalance outrage stocks by matching actions to words."

Dominic Cummings

If the mainstream media was all we had to go by, the only 3 things we'd know about Dominic Cummings are 
a) Benedict Cumberbatch 
b) he said rude things about Tory MPs 
c) he didn't show up to a select committee. 

If they'd spent as much time actually reading his blog as they did trawling it for headline-worthy quotes we might all benefit. There is some pretty incisive critique of the way we do politics ("it is impossible to describe the extent to which politicians in Britain do not even consider ‘the timetable and process for turning announcement X into reality’ as something to think about — for people like Cameron and Blair the announcement IS the only reality and ‘management’ is a dirty word for junior people to think about"), and a guy who has thought and read deeply about how we do decision making and deliver results. 

Fascinating and rewarding read, if you have a spare hour. dominiccummings.com/

Ron Weasley, Political Commentator

Boris Johnson is Prime Minister
Dominic Raab is Foreign Secretary
Priti Patel is Home Secretary
Gavin Williamson is Education Secretary

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Phobia?

This week Parliament will debating something other than Brexit. I know, hard to believe isn't it. The subject in question is a definition of 'Islamophobia' drawn up by the All Party Parliamentary Group on British Muslims. Ahead of the debate, the government has already rejected the definition.

Here's the definition
“Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”.

Where to start? Well, several other people have, so I won't, much. But a few thoughts
1. It's not a definition, unless you take off the first 8 words

2. Where 1 type of Muslim attacks another type, for being the wrong type, is that Islamophobia? Or is it more niche- Shiaphobia, Sufiphobia etc.? Or does it depend on whether they come from a different racial group?

3. To pick another trending phobia, homophobia is variously defined, but the definitions all cluster around an irrational fear, dislike and aversion towards homosexuals and homosexuality. This overlaps reasonably well with the psychological definition of a phobia as an unreasonable fear of or aversion towards x (where x is clowns, spiders, enclosed spaces etc.) If Islamophobia really is a word, and not a slogan, then why not define it in the same way: "An unreasonable fear, dislike and aversion towards Muslims and Islam." That sort of definition is transferrable to prejudice against Jews, Christians, Buddhists, devotees of the Flying Spaghetti Monster et al.

4. In the political and public sphere, us of the '...phobia' label carries more than just the connotation of fear and aversion. It is mainly attached to words and actions, rather than mental states. The label is often used in a similar (but less potentially fatal) way as accusations of blasphemy in Pakistan - someone has said or done something you don't like, and an accusation of 'xphobia' is the easiest and clearest way to label them as an enemy of the people, and someone to hate, ignore and pour invective upon. Whereas a medical diagnosis of a phobia is descriptive, a politically defined phobia is performative, it is public language used to claim or defend territory, to win or shut down discourse, rather than a description of a psychological state.

5. But does that help? In the Islamophobia definition, there is no reference to fear or psychological states at all. It has cut loose from its etymological moorings. It also, oddly, brings in racism: a Christian living in Pakistan may have an irrational fear of Muslims, but it's more likely to be based on Islamic terrorism and mob abuse of the blasphemy laws than on race. In fact, they may have a deep fear and aversion towards Muslims which is entirely rational, if their experience includes repeated examples of anti-Christian violence, church burnings etc.  Some Islamophobia may have a racial component, but some doesn't. So if it doesn't, would it qualify for the APPG definition, or is that something else? What if Muslims themselves are irrationally afraid of their fellow Muslims, and their forms of 'Muslimness'? Or rationally afraid of them?

6. At what point does a 'definition of Islamphobia' cease to be a definition of Islamophobia, and simply be a definition of something else, which has been labelled 'Islamophobia' for political and rhetorial reasons? In the film The Princess Bride, antagonist Vizzini keeps declaring that things are 'inconceivable!' eventually sidekick Inigo responds "you keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means". Repeated use of a word to mean x doesn't entail that x is what the word means. Humpty Dumpty famously declared "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean, no more, no less", which results in 'impenetrability'. If the definition of a word is down to the user, rather than a commonly accepted meaning, then we lose the ability to communicate, and with it the ability to reason together.

7. The medical definition of a 'phobia' carries no moral baggage, but the political definition does. With two diverging understandings of what a phobia is, which one will give way first?

8. There is a danger that Islamophobia, and along with it homophobia, transphobia, and all the modern phobic family, will cease to mean anything. That it will just mean 'Booooo!', rather than communicate any clear content. If a word becomes 100% condemnation, 0% content, then another word will be needed to explain the phenomenon behind it, if we are actually serious about tackling it.

9. In order to be fair, we would not just need a working definition of Islamophobia, but a word for every other form of irrational prejudice and antagonism towards other social, racial, religious and demographic groups. At what point does this just get silly?

10. The (hopefully) blindingly obvious point that any definition needs to allow for rigorous analysis, critique and legitimate criticism of Islam, from historic sources right through to contemporary behaviour, without being used to shut this down.

11. And finally, which is more effective, running backwards away from something bad, or running forwards towards its opposite? It's easier to avoid negative behaviour if there is a positive culture of love, respect, hospitality, generosity and altruism. Focus on those positive things, and the negative behaviour withers away. Perhaps our focus on phobias is a symptom of a wider dis-ease, that we no longer have a shared ethos of goodness which we strive towards, and to which we can hold one another to account. Wrapped up in the supremacy of individual personal choice, a culture of rampant individualism is barren ground for a communal ethic. So more and more we find ourselves policing language, attitudes, and behaviour, so that you cannot be a threat to my rights. That's not a way of being society which has much of a future.

Maybe one day a traveller in an ancient land will stumble across a plaque, inscribed with descriptions of all the phobias defined in the early 21st century. And around it, the lone and level sands will stretch far away.

A good day to bury bad priorities

Today the government is expected to announce continuing benefit freezes and tax cuts. On Friday Comic Relief will be asking us to donate to projects which deal with poverty and financial hardship, homelessness, mental illness, and providing hope and a future for young people.

I wonder if these 2 things are, in any way, related?

If the government is officially outsourcing the welfare state to the charitable sector, I'd rather they came out and said it rather than did it by stealth.

Meaningful Vole

It turns out that all those statements which Theresa May has been reading from were written on a faulty typewriter with a broken t key. Here is what she will be offering the House of Commons on Tuesday

It may appear to be about to dive headfirst down a dark hole, but any similarities to the position of the Prime Minister, House of Commons, or indeed nation as a whole, are purely coincidental.

PS whilst we're on Brexit, I'm a Remainer but even I think the BBC's coverage of this stinks.  For example their '10 ways you could be affected by a no deal Brexit' completely fails to mention that changes in tariffs could mean prices go down, as well as up, and that reduced house prices will be good news to the people who have been priced out of the market since the 1980s. The housing market is vastly overinflated, with a ream of social, relational and financial consequences both for home owners (who are paying a higher slice of their income in mortgages) and non-owners (who can't get into the market at all). I'd rather we weren't leaving, but at least present the facts in a balanced way. I guess I should know better than to ask that of the Beeb by now...

Split Ends

Who would have imagined that the Conservative Party would be the last to split over Brexit?

In December, 8.5% of the Libdem parliamentary party resigned the party whip over the issue. Ok, that's only 1 person...

Just over a week ago Nigel Farage registered a new party, and claims that 100,000 people have 'signed up', though there's some debate over whether that means they're supporting it, or have just subscribed to the live feed for a bit of political entertainment. This follows the resignation of most frontline UKIP figures over the last year.

Today the 7 Labour MPs  - at only 3% a disappointingly small split compared to the Libdems - handed in their cards. It's hard to see where they'll end up without some real heavyweights in the ranks (Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn etc. - Burnhams Twitter feed has been strangely quiet today). But there are plenty of moderate Labour MPs facing deselection from their own constituencies due to Momentum infiltration. Like Russell Crowe's gladiators, they may decide they're better sticking together than being picked off one by one.

That leaves the Greens - who with only 1 MP can't really split - and the Conservatives as the only national UK parties still in one piece. For the PM it's a staggering achievement, in both senses of the word. I'm guessing that being in power is a key gravitational pull on some of Mrs Mays backbenchers, they all saw what happened to Douglas Carswell.

Update: ooops, spoke too soon. Still, they were last to split, even if only by 48 hours.

Update 2: no reference to the Conservative Party on Justine Greenings Twitter feed or homepage. It's quite an achievement to complete her whole biography with no mention of the Conservatives either.

A Lightening Rod on the Irish Border

So Teresa the Relentless is off to Brussels again, to renegotiate the 'Irish Backstop'. Because that's the only real problem with the Withdrawal Agreement for Brexiteers, isn't it?

Um, no. It's only 1 of 8 things on John Redwoods list. Jacob Rees Mogg has several others, and lets just assume for once that Boris Johnson is consistent and still believes the stuff he said last month. Just as Brexit itself has turned the distraction levels up to 11 and prevented good and careful governance of the UK, so the Backstop has become a distraction from debating everything else in the 585 page Agreement.

If no other part of the Withdrawal Agreement is rewritten, Teresa May could come back with movement on the Irish Backstop, and still lose a vote on the Agreement to Brexiteers. This has the potential to become an even more colossal political mess than it is at the moment.

And if the Agreement somehow gets through, the 'May way or the highway' strategy of bringing the agreement to Parliament at such a late stage, compounded by the time lost on confidence votes and infighting, makes it possible that a huge bit of legislation will get through Parliament with almost zero scrutiny of the details.

Brexit - New Options on the Table

Lard Brexit - build a barrier made entirely of lard along the Irish border. This avoids a hard border (except in exceptionally cold weather) and ensures that Brexit is smooth, if not orderly.

Chard Brexit - a no-deal Brexit is piloted in a small town in South Somerset, and then rolled out nationally once teething problems are ironed out. Worked a treat with Universal Credit.

Irish Buckstop - leaders of the main political parties play the popular party game 'pass the Arlene'. Whoever's left holding the DUP when time is up has to come up with a deal which commands a Parliamentary majority. 

Toffed Brexit - Using a Parliamentary protocol last invoked in 1381, Jacob Rees-Mogg compels the entire Withdrawal Agreement to be translated into Latin, and commences negotiations with all the European states who still use it. Within a month, he and the Pope have sorted everything.

Yellow Lines - The red lines in Teresa Mays withdrawal agreement are replaced with parking regulations. All MPs are charged hospital car park rates for every minute spent in the House of Commons debating the Brexit deal. Agreement is reached within a week.

Taking Those Eels off the Table - Jeremy Corbyn comes up with an innovative but irrelevant proposal for fisheries policy.

Peoples Vole - in a British attempt to emulate Groundhog Day, a small rodent is held aloft on March 29th. If he casts a shadow, we stay in the EU, if he doesn't, we carry on holding the little blighter in the air until the sun comes out.

Peoples Vote: Why We Need to Re-Run the 2017 General Election

The people of the UK should get another say on the result of the 2017 General Election. Why?

1. Because some of the claims made during the campaign have turned out to be demonstrably false.

2. Because the facts on the ground have changed, and we know more now about the negative outcomes of certain courses of action (Universal Credit, approach to the Brexit negotiations, dismantling the welfare state, making Chris Grayling Secretary of State for Transport) than we did then. So we would be better informed for this vote than we were for that one.

3. Because the electorate has changed, over a million people are now eligible to vote now who were under 18 at the time of the 2017 election. How can we not involved them in decisions about their future?

4. There are question marks over whether party spending limits were broken, as there were in the 2015 election. 

5. Because we're even less happy with the result now than we were then.

6. Because we need to trust the people.

7. Because we only knew general details about Conservative policy at the time of the election, and they've gone and done things which weren't in their manifesto. Like teaming up with the DUP. Which we didn't vote for.

Coming soon: Why We Need to Re-Run the 2019 General Election.

Brexit metaphor of the day

An escape room where the creators haven't left sufficient clues and devices to actually unlock it and get out. There are 2 minutes to go until you run out of time, and the escape room manager - who would normally let you out if you hadn't solved it - has locked up and gone to write his memoirs.

You can only get out of the room if all the team exit through the same door. There are 2 doors, and a majority of the team are against door May. A majority are also against door No. Some of the team believe that if you are still in there when time runs out, the floor will open up and everyone in the team will plunge to an unpleasant fate.

One individual believes that the clues can be found in the Europe section of the escape room, even though it has been thoroughly searched and there is clearly nothing else there.

Brexit: The Uncivil War: a window on the UK soul.

Brexit the Uncivil War was an eye-opening and very well made bit of TV, which, if you missed the agenda, reminded the viewer of the various sets of criminal and malpractice charges against the Leave campaign at the end (good piece here on how the Remain agenda was pushed throughout the whole piece). The central performance was a compelling turn from Benedict Cumberbatch, and despite a large degree of dramatic license, most of the central facts and plot of the piece seem to be based on reality. This, if you've got 30m spare, is the first hand account by Dominic Cummins of what they did and why;



There are all sorts of bits of the programme which gave pause for thought:
 - the repeated refrain about sections of society whom nobody listens to (great joke about Cummings taking Douglas Carswell to a place where he had no idea where he was 'but its in your constituency Douglas'. Carswells take on the show is here. ). The political machine relies on population profiling, and pitches messages to the groups it needs to win over in order to win votes. If that's how the 'democratic' system works, then it simply leaves out all those who a) the vote machine can take for granted or b) it doesn't need. Vote Leave won because it connected with many people in that category, and made the emotional connection of lost control whilst Remain was stuck on facts about economics.

- niche advertising, and the control of the algorhythm over what we see online. Are you less likely to see this blog if you're unlikely to agree with it? Just about every day on Facebook (my main social media medium) there's a post about how FB only lets a small fraction of your 'friends' see your posts and how to hack out of that. We end up trapped in the feedback loop of social media - every bit of data we post feeds into the equation which decides what data we're allowed to see. This both traps people within a particular bubble (unless they intentionally navigate out of it), and does the same for decision makers and politicians. A medium which proclaims, in the words of the Nokia slogan, that is is 'connecting people', is actually disconnecting us.

The current Brexit turmoil is making this worse - because (as Cummings states above) Brexit is an issue which cuts across parties, no single major party supports it or can deliver on it. The normal delivery mechanism of politics has broken down, so voters are left with politicians who are fundamentally disconnected from the things they voted for. Remainer politicians cannot deliver because they lost, and Brexiteer politicians cannot deliver because they are (still) not on the front benches, or framing the negotiations and deals.

 - truth has always been rationed in politics, but the focus in the Brexit campaign (as in most political campaigns) was not about truth or facts, but about which messages 'cut through'. Not what is real, but what do people relate to. Trump has taken this even further. A previous generation mixed ideology and passion - there was a way of seeing the world, and a passionate commitment to a vision of how it could be set straight. Modern politics, and political coverage, in the main bypasses ideology and heads directly for the passions. BBC news, for example, has decided that the detail of Brexit, policy etc. is far too difficult for its viewers to understand, and has given us the last 3 years almost entirely through the lens of internal power plays in the Conservative party. Just about every major news reporter on the Beeb buys into this soap opera perspective. ITV news at least makes some attempt to brief and inform viewers what issues are at stake. And it has Tom Bradby, who is great.

I'd recommend either watching the programme, or watching the clip above, it's an interesting window on the soul of the UK. For me its a reminder that listening well to people takes more time than preaching at them, but can be 100x more effective. And ironically, for a Brexit campain which made so much capital out of people's sense of being ignored, the social media they relied upon actually increases our alienation and feelings of disempowerment. I quit Twitter last year because, amongst the 2500-odd people I was following, so many of them seemed to be angry with each other. On an almost daily basis I logged off feeling more emotionally disturbed than when I logged on. If the genie of anger is out of the bottle, then (as Brexit: An Uncivil War observed observed) thats not a force anyone can control.

Brex You

When you try your best but you don't succeed
When you get what you want, but not what you need

Teresa May can always be consoled this month by the fact that, back in 2005, Coldplay wrote a song about her. 

Signs in the Sun, the Mail and the Star

In the same week as the various apocalyptic forecasts for the future of the UK, it's once again time for the Church of England lectionary (set readings for each Sunday and weekdays) to hit the spot.

 “There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars. On the earth, nations will be in anguish and perplexity at the roaring and tossing of the sea. People will faint from terror, apprehensive of what is coming on the world, for the heavenly bodies will be shaken. (Luke 21:25-6)

Which is all standard biblical picture language for 'things are about to get really nasty, nobody will have a clue what is going on, and it will feel like the end of the world'. Within 40 years of Jesus' words the Roman emperor changed 4 times in a year following Nero's suicide, each with their own army.

On the radio yesterday someone was sketching out a scenario in Parliament where Teresa May was ousted, her Conservative successor lost a vote of confidence, and Labour won the election. They didn't spell out how Vince Cable would end up Prime Minister at the end of all that but these days, anything's possible.

Jesus warning in the light of the Europe-wide convulsions, and their grim impact on his homeland was: Be careful, or your hearts will be weighed down  either by indulgence or by anxiety. These have always been the two standard ways we deal with bad news and bad situations to avoid praying: blot it out or fret over it.

There is a third way: watch and pray. As if to illustrate, the same passage from Luke concludes with Jesus heading away from Jerusalem to Bethany, the garden of Gethsemane was on the route, and Bethany was Jesus place of retreat and hospitality. It's from the place of prayer that we see clearly. William Wilberforce credits the practice of Sabbath with keeping him focused and persevering on his great work.  "Blessed be God for the day of rest and religious occupations wherein earthly things assume their true size and ambition is stunted…" I wonder if there's a connection between the Prime Ministers remarkable resilience and her regular Sunday worship. Can any politician lead well if they are in the swirl of events 24/7/365? 

First Peek at Christmas TV Schedules

You saw it here first....

Luther: in an updated version of the 500 year old tale, a disgruntled millenial pins 95 Christmas present requests on his Facebook profile, and causes a Europe-wide revolution when he doesn't get what he wants. Originally billed to star David Cameron but nobody's seen him for months.

Doctor Where? Live coverage of an A&E department on Boxing Day. There's a New Year special too, where the Doctor scours the globe from India, to the Philippines, to most of Africa, trying to find treatment for her sick companions, only to discover that all the trained health workers have left to work for the NHS.

Mrs Browns Buoys. Panorama special following the irascible crew of a border crossing in the middle of the Irish Sea. May run until late 2020. Or longer, much longer.

Les Miserables. The new name for BBC regional news

Waterstones Shop Down. Amazons besiege the last remaining high street shop, in a rural town somewhere in the Midlands. A host of celebrity cast members realise that ghostwritten biographies are are too insubstantial to defend themselves against the incessant volley of attack, most of it aimed at the address next door but they called and nobody was in. Where in the shop is there a book substantial enough to save them?

The Mash Report. Stocktake at the local food bank. Starring roughly 160,000 households.

The Queens Christmas Massage. By special dispensation, delivered this year by Tyson Fury. To Donald Trump.

Match of the Day: Special Edition. Which footballer can match their salary to how much they are actually worth?

I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here! No.