Gareth Roberts

When I woke up yesterday morning, almost the first thing I saw was the announcement that Keir Starmer was to address the nation imminently. Despite the seriousness of the situation in the Middle East, I’m afraid my first thought was ‘Nah, we’re all right, don’t put yourself out Keir mate’, although possibly not quite so politely expressed. Because lecternmania – the getting out of that little prime ministerial podium to speak to the people of Britain – has gone too far. I do wish our beloved leaders would stop it.

The enormous fun of Crufts has reminded us that Britain is a nation of dog lovers. Or maybe we’re kidding ourselves? Because policy documents on the Green party website reveal that they are ‘opposed to the wholesale breeding, manipulation and destruction of those animals who are chosen as companions to the human race’. What marvellously grandiose language! The next time I give the cat a treat I shall cackle evilly about choosing it as my companion for wholesale manipulation. The Greens continue: ‘We will introduce measures to regulate the care and conditions for such animals, including a two-tier system of dog-licensing (breeding and non-breeding), licensing of all animal breeders and dog owners.

Reform has topped every national poll for a good long while – benefitting, as the Greens also have and the Lib Dems haven’t (because there are limits), from a combination of public fatigue and disgust with the two old main parties. But there are other new kids on the right-wing block, both fronted by ex-associates of Nigel Farage and former Reformers. We now have Ben Habib’s Advance and Rupert Lowe’s Restore. First things first. These both sound like team names from The Apprentice. And this is fitting, because the kind of spatting, squabbling and blame-throwing that we see in Lord Sugar’s boardroom is now being acted out on the political stage.

As the three-word headline, ‘STARMER BLOCKS BURNHAM’ smashed on to our phone screens on Saturday, I felt I could almost hear the gleeful communal roar across the country; the same kind of Mexican wave of delight that passes through a school canteen when a dinner lady drops a big tray of puddings, a heap of custard and crockery. Labour wars always bring good cheer. In rotten times we have to get our pleasures where we can. In this particular case, any outcome would have been a banter-facilitating outcome. If Starmer had permitted Burnham to stand in the Gorton and Denton by-election, the reaction would have been similar: here we go, here we go, here we go.

With all the talk of Brexit, do you ever get the sense that social media is stuck in 2016? Well, now it really is. A trend has taken off online involving people posting throwback pictures from a decade ago. A Tumblr video captioned ‘Welcome back #2016’ kicked off the nostalgia. It has resulted in a 450 per cent surge in '2016' searches across platforms, as those born between 1997-2002 share photos, songs like Drake's ‘Views’ and Pokemon Go memories. A Tumblr video captioned ‘Welcome back #2016’ kicked off the nostalgia The year 2016 is being described as one in which pop culture peaked. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about those 12 months is how little has changed in the decade since.

The eerie and the uncanny fascinate us, whether it’s the abominable snowman, the Loch Ness monster or the Bermuda Triangle. And now we have another great mystery to puzzle over: why is this Labour government so awful? What is it all for? At the election I was not optimistic about Starmer’s mob, but I allowed myself a brief moment of wondering – even hoping, a bit – that I was wrong. What if Labour actually had the wits and the nerve to jolt Britain out of its decline? It seemed very unlikely, yes, though stranger things have happened. This government is fascinatingly bad, in a way that attracts your wonder at the same as it repels But in the end that wasn’t the case.

Keir Starmer is unpopular. You may have noticed this from his record-breakingly low approval ratings. The weekend just gone brought pungent public confirmation: booing at the mention of his name at the Royal Variety performance at the Albert Hall and a spirited chant among the crowd at the World Darts Championship at Alexandra Palace, which threw an accusation of onanism on to the critical palette. This is not a new phenomenon. You will remember that George Osborne was booed at the Olympics. And older readers will recall that Margaret Thatcher’s name was greeted with hisses and rumbles even in politer times. But above the street level, in the broad flow of our popular culture, where is the outrage? There is much to be outraged about, as if you need reminding.

Rewatching the 1974 version of Murder on the Orient Express the other night, I was struck by the incredible organisational skills of Mrs Harriet Hubbard, played by Lauren Bacall. (Spoilers on the line ahead). Mrs Hubbard assembles an extremely disparate team of 12 potential killers with a grudge against the victim, books them all on a transcontinental train crossing where they all pretend not to know each other, and orchestrates a stabbing party, a dodeca-murder – improvising wildly as she goes because of the sheer last-minute bad luck of Hercule Poirot being berthed right next door to the scene of the crime. How did she go about coordinating this scenario, I wondered? Was there a WhatsApp group? In real life, much less complex plots have a habit of leaking or hitting snags.

Kemi Badenoch has some thoughts on the Labour party. When pressed by the Telegraph on who or what would come after Rachel Reeves in the terrible event of her being defenestrated, the Tory leader mused: ‘They [Labour] are going to go through lots of different cycles of Labour MPs, some of whom are very similar to the ones that have gone to the Jeremy Corbyn party. You see what a rabble they are. Labour are actually not that much different.’ The thing that really unites the Your Party nuts and Labour MPs is their sanctimony Is that fair? Like many, my weekend was considerably enlivened by highlights from the livestream of the inaugural Your Party conference. This has been dubbed ‘comedy gold’ and ‘better than Netflix’. It was certainly surreal and sad.

After its Gotterdämerung week, capped by the ‘sorry not sorry’ resignations of Tim Davie and Deborah Turness, it didn’t take long for the BBC and its supporters to start flinging mud. You are political; we are not. We are only being nice; you have mounted a ‘right-wing coup’. I’m trying to imagine what a Daily Telegraph coup would look like – Janet Daley rolling in atop a T-54 tank, Charles Moore installed as El Presidente. You might think that reacting to Michael Prescott’s internal report sooner might’ve been a better idea for Tim Davie than doing nothing much and hoping it wouldn’t leak; that ‘I’ll put this fizzing stick of dynamite in my bottom drawer for six months and cross fingers it won’t go off’ was an unwise strategy. But that isn’t the BBC way.