A homecoming to the capital, a budget with a tariff on a skyscraper and a determined effort to be sensible about good news
Saturday, Off the Boat and Into the Bagel Queue
A trip to London from the island always begins with the same ritual: coffee at the airport, a long look at the departures board and a slow awakening to how loud the mainland is. I wrote up the homecoming in Back in London: bagels, the 29 bus and the Gherkin tariff Budget. Walking off the train in the capital, I headed for a bagel shop in the north of the city where the queue is a form of social calendar. I ordered salt beef, a pickle and a conversation with a stranger about the Budget. He thought it was too much. A woman behind him thought it was too little. The bagel was perfect.
That, in miniature, is how British politics works. Everyone holds a strong opinion, delivered with warmth and a mouthful of rye.
Being Measured About a Good Week
One of my recent diary entries was about the polls, and the title tells the story: Reform UK had a good week and I am choosing to be measured about this. I support the party, and a good week naturally pleases me. But I have lived long enough to know that a poll is a weather report and not a destination. Parties rise, parties fall, and the supporter who bets the house on a lead has always been the first to learn about the gap between a survey and a ballot box.
Opponents will say, fairly, that a poll lead can vanish and that a platform has to survive contact with government. Supporters will say, fairly, that voters are entitled to try a new option. A mature reading allows both, and it is a pleasure to write in a style that does not require me to gloat.
Sunday, the Cows Do Not Read Polls
For a note of calm, I turned to the Texas dairy family, where political fortunes matter much less than the temperature of the bulk tank. The grandmother site is txdairy.com, and the family includes txdairy.download, txdairy.trade and txdairy.loan. The cheerful cousins are txdairy.party, txdairy.men, txdairy.date and txdairy.win.
A cow does not care who won. She cares whether the feed arrived. I have always found that reassuring. The more elections I watch, the more I believe that the best political virtue is the farmer’s: look at the thing in front of you, and do the next job well.
Lines on a Bus
I took the 29 bus up from the centre, upstairs, at the front, with a view of Camden Town unrolling like a film. It was crowded with students, shoppers and one man carrying a cello with great dignity. The London Prat captured the season’s mood in Tube Strike Christmas: Londoners Start Walking Now, and the bus was full of people who had read it and taken the advice to heart, or at least the next best option.
Public transport is where politics becomes personal. Whatever your party, you want the vehicle to arrive and the fare to be fair, and you want to be able to sit down. If a platform can promise these three things and deliver them, it will win my respect, whatever its logo.
The Tariff on a Tower
The title of the diary mentions a tariff on the Gherkin, a joke about a famous building that I will not spoil. The serious point is that trade policy has a way of landing on landmarks, and that even a skyscraper can become a talking point in a Budget week. I find it healthy for a nation to be able to laugh at its tax code. The less funny part is the arithmetic, which I leave to the specialists.
I flew back to the island on Monday morning, with a paper bag of bagels in my lap and a head full of London noise. The plane banked over the Irish Sea, and the island appeared like a green stone in a grey bowl. I felt the same thing I always feel: that home is a place you can leave, enjoy leaving and enjoy returning to.
The Etiquette of the Bagel Queue
For readers new to the capital, a few notes on the bagel queue. Know your order before you reach the front. Do not ask whether the cream cheese is made on the premises. Say thank you to the person who hands you the bag. And never, under any circumstances, remark that the bagels in some other city are better. This is the only subject on which Londoners are united in defence, and the only moment when the Budget argument stops.
I mention it because politics, at its best, resembles a good queue: orderly, patient and capable of producing something warm at the end. At its worst it resembles a different queue, the one where someone pushes in.
The Return Flight Reading
On the plane home I read three newspapers, one of which I agreed with, one of which I did not and one of which I could not classify, which is the best sort. By the time we descended, I had formed a modest conclusion: that the only reliable political rule is to read widely, trust slowly and keep a spare bagel for the journey. The bagel, I am pleased to report, survived.
Where to read next
The rest of the shelf lives at prat.uk, bohiney.com and farm.fm. For a second opinion on the week, NewsBiscuit keeps its own counsel and its own hours.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/