Andrew Marr

We are all drama queens, really, we political hacks; and so we were all thoroughly delighted by Theresa May’s Tuesday coup. I have long been arguing that we would have an election this year, and I had been beginning to feel lonely. But one big thing I got wrong: it had seemed to me in January that a Brexit election would shatter much party discipline, since the voters would be principally interested in where candidates stood on the Great Issue and both Tories and Labour were deeply divided about it. However, by framing the current contest in the way she has, May has deftly but brutally carved away the long and substantial tradition of Tory pro-EU politics. In this election, to be Tory is to support her uncompromising version of Brexit.

One remark from the Christmas party season knocks insistently around my head. It came from Nigel Farage on a staircase in the Ritz. For those who didn’t enjoy 2016, a year of political revolution, he gleefully promised: ‘2017 will be a hell of a sight worse.’ My, my. What did he mean? Had he taken one Ferrero Rocher too many? Or does Farage, like an increasing number of MPs, expect a general election next year, including further dramatic upsets? The biggest reason for pooh-poohing a 2017 election isn’t the Fixed-term Parliaments Act but Prime Minister’s character. Theresa May is extremely cautious and she doesn’t want to test the electorate just yet.

One remark from the Christmas party season knocks insistently around my head. It came from Nigel Farage on a staircase in the Ritz. For those who didn’t enjoy 2016, a year of political revolution, he gleefully promised: ‘2017 will be a hell of a sight worse.’ My, my. What did he mean? Had he taken one Ferrero Rocher too many? Or does Farage, like an increasing number of MPs, expect a general election next year, including further dramatic upsets? The biggest reason for pooh-poohing a 2017 election isn’t the Fixed-term Parliaments Act but Prime Minister’s character. Theresa May is extremely cautious and she doesn’t want to test the electorate just yet.

One remark from the Christmas party season knocks insistently around my head. It came from Nigel Farage on a staircase in the Ritz. For those who didn’t enjoy 2016, a year of political revolution, he gleefully promised: ‘2017 will be a hell of a sight worse.’ My, my. What did he mean? Had he taken one Ferrero Rocher too many? Or does Farage, like an increasing number of MPs, expect a general election next year, including further dramatic upsets? The biggest reason for pooh-poohing a 2017 election isn’t the Fixed-term Parliaments Act but Prime Minister’s character. Theresa May is extremely cautious and she doesn’t want to test the electorate just yet.

Throughout our holiday, reports from Rio rippled in — last thing at night, first thing in the morning — a regular golden swoosh of heartwarming news. We are only an averagely sporty family, but these Olympics made us all happier. Across the media, there’s been a mild controversy about whether the remarkable achievements of Team GB say anything bigger about Britain — ‘We always punch above our weight’ — or very little; ‘Sport is sport and only sport, and that’s why we like it.’ But of course there are wider lessons. First, there was real, big long-term investment provided by the National Lottery and the foresight of Sir John Major. Second, the unsentimental and even ‘unfair’ way this money was channelled by Sport UK.

Flabby, vaguely disorientated and, more than three years on, still struggling with stroke recovery, I am on a radical diet. No booze, no caffeine of any kind, no lots of other things — sausages, bacon, roast meat, you name it. Not a lot of fun, but the revelation has been coffee: for well over 40 years I have believed that I can only function in the morning after pints of coal-black, extremely strong caffeine. And now, aged 57, I find that it was total horlicks all along — I feel perkier, less tired and less stressed (after a hard few days) without the stuff. This makes me a real oddity in a country in which coffee has become a massive popular cult. I wander around Baristastan, passing ’Bucks, Costas and Neros, feeling a bit like a Wahhabi in Soho at chucking-out time.

This is the Corbyn summer. From the perspective of a short holiday, my overwhelming feeling is one of despair at my own semi-trade — the political commentariat, the natterati, the salaried yacketting classes. Who among us, really, predicted that Jeremy Corbyn would romp ahead like this? Where were the post-election columns pointing out that David Cameron’s victory would lead to a resurgent quasi-Marxist left? And that’s just the beginning: how many of the well-connected, sophisticated, numerate political writers expected Labour to be slaughtered in the general election? Not me, that’s for sure. Going further back, how many people in 1992 told us John Major was an election winner? That Parris, I vaguely recall, but anyone else?

This is the Corbyn summer. From the perspective of a short holiday, my overwhelming feeling is one of despair at my own semi-trade — the political commentariat, the natterati, the salaried yacketting classes. Who among us, really, predicted that Jeremy Corbyn would be romping ahead like this? Where were the post-election columns pointing out that David Cameron’s victory would lead to a resurgent quasi-Marxist left? And that’s just the beginning: how many of the well-connected, sophisticated, numerate political writers expected Labour to be slaughtered in the general election? Not me, that’s for sure. Going further back, how many people in 1992 told us John Major was an election winner? That Parris, I vaguely recall, but anyone else?

So far, what an infuriating election campaign. We have the most extraordinary array of digital, paper and broadcasting media at our fingertips — excellent political columnists, shrewd and experienced number-crunchers, vivid bloggers and dedicated fact-checkers. There has never been a general election in which the interested voter has had access to so much carefully assembled and up-to-the-minute data. And it’s unpredictable, and it matters: the recovery on a knife edge, the future of the UK, our future in Europe — all that. It ought to be thrilling. So why is the campaign proving so tooth-grindingly awful? Simply because the parties have chosen to refuse to tell us what we need to know. There’s this thing called the deficit (you may have heard about it).

It’s been a strange summer. After a stroke, holidays are not what they used to be. We went to Juan-les-Pins for a week in a hotel. It seemed perfect because it had beaches for the family, and at nearby Antibes there is a great little Picasso museum for me to haunt. It has the best drawing of a goat ever made. My daughters and wife doggedly manhandled me across hot sand into and out of the water and I enjoyed that. But being surrounded by so many fit people running, cycling and swimming was a little dispiriting. Mind you, I’ve always been useless at holidays. I hate being too hot. I hate lying around on grit (rebranded as ‘sand’). I hate airports. I hate long car journeys. My idea of a good break involves a bracingly cold northern city and some good art galleries.