Gareth Roberts

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.

What imaginary country does Labour's new deputy leader, Lucy Powell, live in? When Powell was crowned as the official thorn-in-the-side of Keir Starmer – as if he needed one – this weekend, she painted a picture of a Britain frustrated at the slow pace of change that Labour is delivering. It's always enjoyable hearing about the place that senior Labour politicians think they inhabit ‘Division and hate are on the rise,’ she said. 'Discontent and disillusionment widespread. The desire for change, impatient and palpable. People are looking around, looking elsewhere for the answers … we have to offer hope, to offer the big change the country is crying out for. We must give a stronger sense of our purpose, whose side we are on, and of our Labour values and beliefs.

What do the following things have in common? The ‘Safety Advisory Group’ of Birmingham City Council banning the sale of away tickets to fans of an Israeli football team. The refusal of police to arrest ‘pro-Palestinian’ marchers calling to ‘globalise the intifada’ right in front of them. The reluctance of politicians to implement the law on separation of the sexes, made clear months ago by the Supreme Court ruling. The government’s unwillingness to protect parliament from Chinese spying. I think the answer is simple: plain, old-fashioned fear. Yes, we often hear accusations that the institutions are squeamish about difficult topics, that individuals are guilty of moral cowardice.

The Greens are having quite a moment. Since the anointing of Zack Polanski as leader of the party, there’s been a 45 per cent increase in the membership, which is now up to about a hundred thousand believers. The party is also doing very well, comparatively speaking, in opinion polling, reaching about 15 per cent, not very far behind the Tories. The Polanski surge has come courtesy of a Corbyn-esque policy blitz But while the Greens are keen to talk up their polling success and growing membership – which is, naturally, good for party coffers – it won’t necessarily correlate to wider electoral success. We’ve been here before: during Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of Labour, the membership peaked at a modern high of about half a million. And we know how that ended.

The G-A-Y Bar in Soho’s Old Compton Street is to close for good this weekend. It opened in the mid-1990s, spinning off from the Saturday club night of the same name at the nearby Astoria (itself long gone, thanks to Crossrail). Entrepreneur Jeremy Joseph, who has run the ‘brand’ since its inception, posted the news on Instagram: ‘Old Compton Street has been my home and my work. When I opened G-A-Y Bar, it was to be one of the safest and most proudly LGBT streets – a place where you could be who you are and feel safe. For me, Old Compton Street has lost that LGBT identity. Old Compton Street wasn’t just a street, it was a community together as one. But sadly that’s not Old Compton Street anymore.

The Labour conference, given the government’s current levels of popularity – somewhere about the same rung occupied by, say, galloping dysentery or Huw Edwards – was always going to be a macabre spectacle. But there’s an aspect to this Grand Guignol that I wasn’t expecting; the unpleasant sight of various members of the cabinet vying, in their addresses, to show who can wave the flag with the greatest gusto. We’ve had Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper railing against Reform, describing them as ‘plastic patriots’ We’ve had Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper railing against Reform, describing them as ‘plastic patriots’. Housing Secretary Steve Reed is trying to reinvent himself as a likely lad, full of laughs.