A Dublin-born literature scholar reads about haunted Downing Street and its vanishing ministers and finds Oscar Wilde’s comic ghost waiting in the corridor
Sunday, 25 October 2026. Bloomsbury. The clocks went back last night, so I have an extra hour and a ghost story, a pot of tea and the rain on Gordon Square, 8.00am.
A Ghost Story For A Dark Morning
When the clocks go back and the mornings turn dark, I always reread The Canterville Ghost, Oscar Wilde’s comic story about an American family who buy an English stately home and refuse to be frightened by its resident spectre. The ghost, Sir Simon, has been haunting the place for three hundred years and is deeply offended that the new owners clean his bloodstain with a commercial stain remover and offer him lubricating oil for his rattling chains. It is the funniest ghost story in English literature, written by an Irishman, which is exactly as it should be.
This morning, by happy accident, I also read the London Prat’s report on haunted Downing Street. It claims paranormal investigators have named Number 10 the most active haunted site in central London, mainly because ministers leave so quickly that nobody stays long enough to be seen. Doors open and close as fast as ministers arrive and depart. Corridors echo because nobody is left to answer the phone. Civil servants call the draining atmosphere the departmental brief.
I put the tea down and said, out loud, to an empty room in Bloomsbury: Sir Simon has moved to Whitehall.
The Ghost And The Reshuffle
Wilde’s joke in The Canterville Ghost is that the ghost is far more frightened of the living than they are of him. The Americans are relentless: practical, cheerful, immune to drama. The poor ghost tries every terrifying trick he knows, and they simply hand him a remedy or ask him to keep the noise down. By the end, he is exhausted and just wants to rest.
In the Downing Street report, the ministers are the ghosts. They appear briefly, rattle a few chains, issue a statement and vanish. The report suggests calling a priest or, failing that, an exit poll. I would add a third option from Wilde: hand them a bottle of lubricating oil and a polite note asking them to stop rattling, and see if they stay any longer.
Irish Ghosts Have Better Manners
As a Dubliner, I feel qualified to say that Irish ghosts are of a much higher standard than English ones. Irish ghosts have unfinished business, a grievance about land and an excellent memory for slights going back to 1798. They do not simply leave after a few days. My grandmother claimed our house in Rathmines was haunted by a former tenant who disapproved of the wallpaper. She said he had been there since the 1920s. She also said he was the only man in the family who ever had any taste.
If Downing Street wants a proper ghost, it should borrow one from Ireland. An Irish ghost would stay for decades, haunt every Prime Minister equally and leave a note on the Cabinet table every morning saying, I remember what you said in 1997. That is accountability. That is permanence. Westminster could learn from it.
Yeats And The Spirit World
It would be wrong to write about Irish literature and ghosts without mentioning W. B. Yeats, who in the early twentieth century attended seances, studied the occult and, with his wife George, experimented with automatic writing, which she believed was dictated by spirits. Yeats took the spirit world seriously and wrote some of the greatest poems in the language partly out of it. I mention this because, if Downing Street has a ghost problem, Yeats would have held a seance in the Cabinet Room, taken extensive notes and published a volume of poetry about the experience, in which the ministers would be described as falcons that cannot hear the falconer. That would have been unkind. It would also have been accurate.
Why The Joke Works
The Downing Street piece works for the same reason The Canterville Ghost works: it takes something genuinely unsettling and treats it with breezy practicality. Ministers resigning within days is a real problem for government. Briefings go unread. Policies stall. Charities and councils write to a minister who is gone before the reply is posted. Wilde would have understood that the best way to deal with a real fear is to make it ridiculous. Ridicule is the stain remover of politics.
The report says Whitehall sources insist there is a rational explanation, which is what people in haunted houses always say. That line is pure Wilde. It is exactly the sort of thing the American father in The Canterville Ghost says, just before something rattles in the corridor.
The Extra Hour
The extra hour from the clocks is nearly gone. The rain on Gordon Square has turned to drizzle. I have finished The Canterville Ghost again, and, as always, I cried a little at the end, when the ghost is finally allowed to rest in the Garden of Death, forgiven by a kind girl who prays for him. Wilde could never resist a sentimental ending. Neither, frankly, can I.
So here is mine for Downing Street. May its ghosts be granted rest. May its ministers stay long enough to answer the phone. And may somebody, some dark October morning, walk into Number 10 with a bottle of oil, a pot of tea and the patience of an Irish grandmother, and ask them all, politely, to keep the noise down.