Monday
One more thing to tick off my bucket list. England’s men have won a cricket World Cup final at the fourth time of asking. I can die just a little less unhappy. But God it was stressful. We were staying with friends in Somerset and I watched the first six hours planted in front of the TV. Then, at about five in the afternoon, with England struggling on about 100-4 and the overs ticking by, my wife said it was time for us to leave to go back to London. And I didn’t put up a fight. In fact I was grateful. I couldn’t take it any more, as I was convinced that all the next few hours had in store was an inexorable slide to a narrow defeat and that I would have contributed to the loss by having stayed to watch it. I couldn’t even listen to the game on the radio on the journey home as I was too tense. So as my wife dozed I half-heartedly listened to Radio 4, making sure to switch off for every news bulletin, and just willed the clock to tick past to a time when the match would definitely be over. Then I could switch on, get the result and deal with the disappointment. It didn’t quite work out that way. I held out until about 7.30pm and then I noticed I had a text from a friend saying ‘Incredible match’. Assuming this must mean it was over and that England had won, I turned on the radio to find that New Zealand required two runs from the final ball of the super over. The best laid plans ... Somehow England and I got over the line. After a few tears of joy, my main feeling was relief. The good stuff is always so fleeting with me. If we’d lost, I’d still be depressed.
Tuesday
You can tell quite a lot about the state of any leadership campaign from who turns up to the spin room. For the final Sun-TalkRadio head-to-head debate between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, Dominic Raab from Team Boris had arrived long before the start and could not have been more charming. When he was both Brexit secretary and challenging for the leadership himself, Raab was a knot of barely repressed anger and looked like a man hoping no one would find out about his eight road rage convictions. Now he was Mr Smiley, happy to take the piss out of himself and looking every bit the man who wasn’t expecting to be taking public transport for much longer. This time next week he will be back in the cabinet. Twenty minutes before the debate began I asked if he could save us both a bit of time and tell me now why Boris had easily won the debate. For a moment, he even looked tempted. Tellingly, only one MP, Steve Brine, from Team Hunt made an appearance, and he only made it to the spin room about halfway through. Probably just as well, as Hunt already appeared to have conceded he’d lost and was more interested in not pissing Johnson off and was pitching for a job in his cabinet. Moments before the debate ended, Iain Duncan Smith and Priti Patel from Team Boris swanned into the room to authoritatively declare their man to have delivered all the killer lines, despite not having heard any of them. There’s going to be a lot of disappointed faces when the jobs are divvied up next week.
Wednesday
The election of Ursula von der Leyen as the new president of the European Commission drew a predictably snarky response from the Brexit party. Nigel Farage tweeted: “Ursula von der Leyen has scraped in by nine votes. Power but no legitimacy,” while MEP Claire Fox was similarly appalled. “Jeez – standing ovation for #UrsulaVonDerLeyen who won in an election against herself by – wait for it – 9 votes. Craven,” she tweeted. As it happened, Von der Leyen won almost exactly 52% of the vote, a result that the Brexit party normally describe as an overwhelming majority but which on this occasion was treated as the narrowest of narrow victories. The Brexiters’ other objection – that there was no one standing against Von der Leyen – seemed almost as wilfully dim. The vote was actually a ratification of a decision previously taken by the 28 EU leaders and if Von der Leyen had not achieved the necessary votes then she would not have got the job and the EU would have had to begin the process of choosing a new president all over again. So although there was no other candidate on the ballot, every vote still counted. All of which was rather more democratic than the Brexit party’s election of its own leader which basically consisted of Farage declaring himself as leader after his predecessor disqualified herself by being outed as a racist. No one in the Brexit party even got to ratify Farage’s appointment.
Thursday
A mental health warning. If you are under 50, then the FaceApp feature that ages you by about 25 years can be quite a laugh. I’ve used it on a couple of friends at work and it made them look rather distinguished and wholly recognisable in comparison to how they are now. Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn. Well not much, anyway. It’s a completely different story when you’re the wrong side of 60, though. At least it was in my case. I tried it out of curiosity and am now rather regretting it. If the app is in any way accurate, my old age is going to be no fun at all. The picture that emerged made Samuel Beckett look like a poster boy for someone who had spent his whole life moisturising. My whole face appeared to have collapsed in on itself and was just a mass of blotches and saggy, deep crevasses. Curiously, my ears also seemed to have almost entirely disappeared. Presumably to prevent me from hearing the screams of terror from young children when I venture outdoors. Assuming my legs are still working and I can actually walk. It was a genuinely disturbing experience. I’ve seen healthier looking corpses. I tried showing the picture to my wife but she refused point blank. She finds the person I have become over the last 35 years disappointing enough and would rather not know what horrors are yet to come.
Friday
As Boris Johnson prepares to move into Downing Street, the old guard has spent the week trying to protect their legacies. Such as they are. As almost none of her Conservative MPs now bother to turn up to hear her at prime minister’s questions any more, Theresa May has had to go out and about making policy announcements on social issues that would probably have got a better hearing if she had made them several years ago when she had a chance to make a difference. She also made one of the most bizarre farewell speeches at Chatham House, in which she lamented the lack of compromise and teamwork in modern politics. It rather sounded as if she was talking to herself. Chris Grayling, who has redefined the meaning of uselessness during his years in cabinet, chose to mark his last outing on the government front benches at transport questions by remaining almost entirely silent, letting junior ministers do almost all the talking instead. A tactic he should probably have employed earlier in his career. Philip Hammond, meanwhile, has been treating Twitter as his personal liveblog as he rubbishes every claim Johnson makes about a no-deal Brexit having no economic consequences. I’m fairly certain that May, Grayling and Hammond won’t miss me, but I will miss them. Three years ago, I had no idea they would provide such great material for me. And despair for the country. Still, I’m fairly confident that what’s to come will be even worse. So bring them on. I refuse to be taken even further down without a good laugh.
Digested week: Boris Johnson experiences his first defeat in the Commons before he’s even prime minister.
