I'm sure we do, something to do with 'gas', I think...
This may have been an unwanted problem for Keir Starmer and the home secretary, who took the brunt of the unedifying shitshow, but for every other minister it came as something of a relief. They could all ease themselves back into the new year, secure in the knowledge that for once no one was paying them any attention. Their screw-ups and local difficulties could slide under the radar. In government, that is known as living the dream.
Maybe that attitude is why governments everywhere are failing?
Steve Reed is almost certainly wishing that Muskmania could have gone on for just one more day. Why hadn’t the world’s weirdest SpaceX cadet gone one further than threatening to invade the UK and launch one of his rockets against us?
Musk man bad! appears to have overtaken Orange man bad! as a rallying cry amongst the progressives, doesn't it?
Which meant that Steve was in the spotlight as he faced one of his toughest gigs of the year: a keynote speech at the Oxford Farming Conference. What a difference a year makes. This time last year, Reed had gone down a storm at the conference. They couldn’t get enough of him. They didn’t even mind that he so clearly wasn’t one of them. Not even when he put on wellies. Steve is a city boy through and through. The closest he comes to the great outdoors is a half-hour walk in Crystal Palace Park – stick to the paths, the grass is rather muddy – before nipping in to Gail’s for a croissant and cortado. No, the farmers forgave all that because they were as fed up with the Tories as he was. So when he had spent the entire speech trashing the Conservatives, they lapped it up.
And now reality has entered the chat, and they aren't so enamoured. They've realised something their livestock probably already knew, that sometimes the grass isn't always greener.
Now … not so much. In just six months as environment secretary, Steve has sped through the first four stages of grief. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression: he’s been there and got the T-shirt. Tried explaining that none of this has been his fault with the farmers. He only got to find out about the changes to inheritance tax the night before the budget. No one had consulted him. He was just the sucker who had to deal with the fallout.
And yet somehow, you think their ire should be directed at the guy who's pointing out his boss's deficiencies?
