Madeline Grant

John Healey had been sent to Coventry, something he will have to get used to after his budget next month, at least if he ever intends to use any form of business again. He was visiting ‘The Manufacturing Technology Centre’ which is the sort of vague, ‘Universal Exports’ style name for a company that might have, in past years, made people think Healey was a double agent. In the last ministry, Healey had certainly got a reputation as a man of action, of something of a hard man who was prepared to put his job on the line to get what he wanted. That reputation, as it becomes pretty clear that he won’t be giving defence the spending it needs despite resigning because he said it was so important, is in tatters. Healey needs a new brand and Coventry was the place for it.

It hasn’t been a glittering 24 hours for Reform UK. To lose one senior official might be regarded as misfortune etc. However there was no sense of impending doom at the Reform conference in Birmingham – indeed, in his speech Mr Farage obliquely referred to recent events as ‘a little local difficulty’.  These events are not like other conferences. They’re a strange fusion between political frustration and high camp. Think Liberace does the Battle of Orgreave. Speakers are announced with rock music and spotlights, the audience are bathed in a strange blue glow, making the NEC seem like a cross between a day spa and a level on the Crystal Maze.

There was a cautious cheer for Andy Burnham as he stood up for his first PMQs. MPs were perhaps cautious of a repeat of the day before when Burnham delivered the longest opening statement of modern times. Or maybe the PM’s summer of lying low just meant that some of the more intellectually challenged members had forgotten who he was. I think we have found the new ‘my father was toolmaker’ and it’s Andy’s patented Ena Sharples tribute act It may have been 16 years, but Mr Burnham was at his ease as he rose for the first question. Clearly circumlocution is a bit like riding a bike – it’s the preferred way to get anywhere in the Labour Party.

The legacy of the Victorians is everywhere; we depend on them for our sewage disposal, our railway networks, much of our infrastructure and housing stock. Even the hooded eyelids of our Royal Family mark them out as descendants of Victoria herself. The right often dwells on how far we’ve fallen from Victorian greatness – painting modern Britain’s existence amongst the physical debris of Victoriana as akin to living in the ruins of a superior civilisation, like mud-smeared Visigoths prowling around the remains of the Colosseum. Less discussed is how the Victorians are still very much with us.  ‘In the UK, both people must say “yes” to sex’, scolds one of the posters, which were handed out to asylum seekers. ‘This is called consent’.

The Clacton by-election was finally over. Even by the standards of August news stories, it had grown pretty stale pretty quickly. The result was never in doubt, nor were the entrenched responses of the key players. Reform figures took to the airwaves to insist all questions about Nigel Farage’s finances had been answered by the ballot box. Those who opposed him took to the airwaves to insist the opposite was true. Back at the count, the media were having to make do with increasingly contorted attempts to pretend Binface was amusing In Clacton itself, Mr Farage was essentially playing a game of cat and mouse with the media circus.

It’s amazing how far a prime minister can get just by not being Keir Starmer. There’s considerable political success to be had in simply reversing his stupidest policies, from digital ID to scrapping jury trials, and today, for now at least – assisted suicide – which Mr Burnham announced he wouldn’t be taking forward until social care is in better shape.  The most kamikaze-shaped policy of the Starmer government, the Chagos surrender, still technically remains on the books. Whether Burnham will have the balls or nous to do a full-scale scrapping of his predecessor’s deranged programme remains to be seen.  Burnham is helped by the contrast in his tone – Starmer invariably sounded like an impatient undertaker when announcing policy.

Big Ange is back. From a sketchwriter’s point of view I have to say that this is marvellous news. Rayner is actually an exceptionally old-fashioned politician. She’s akin to the union barons of the past, or perhaps even more accurately, to the Democrat mob bosses who ran Chicago or New York from the middle of the 19th century. I can picture her turning No. 10 North into a sort of Tammany Hall operation where she dishes out service contracts to choice clients with gay abandon.  Rayner’s way of conducting herself might echo the ‘beer and sandwiches’ sleaze of the past, but it has a more grating side.

The Liberal Democrat party of Russia and the Liberal Democrat party of the United Kingdom are not, on the face of it, natural bedfellows. Google declares that the latter’s main policies are ‘healthcare reform, the replacement of Ofwat and closer integration with Europe’. The former’s main policies are the shooting of political opponents, the deportation of all Chechens and something they ominously term ‘imperial reconquest’. However, as unlikely as it may seem, they are not without their similarities. Both have been accused – not without some justification – of being neither liberal nor democratic.

A brass fanfare; a wide establishing shot of five men in three-piece suits, seated in a library of leather-bound tomes – this is Harold Macmillan doing informal. The scene is from a 1959 party political broadcast, which purports to show a ‘relaxed chat’ between Macmillan and four of his ministers, all of whom he refers to by their cabinet titles. Almost everything about it is artificial (including quite possibly the claim that it took place the day after the parliamentary recess). Watching it now is a reminder of two things, perhaps contradictory. First, that prime ministers have always played a clever and not entirely authentic game when it comes to informality; second, how far we’ve fallen. Can you imagine the equivalent today?