Great moments of political change often dissolve into a circus and that’s what’s going on now.

Wes Streeting did the mad British politics walk this morning. You know the one. The minister has to walk into No 10 to the sound of journalists shouting like the town drunk on a Saturday afternoon. “Are you going to resign, Health Secretary?” one screamed. “Are you going to stand for leader?” another said.

Streeting’s face took on the classic expression of this scenario: a practised look of steely indifference, as if he were taking a perfectly ordinary walk on a Wednesday morning and was entirely unaware of the mad shrieking all around him. Paradoxically, this actually makes them look more mad than if they’d respond to the questions.

You can summarise the whole political culture of this country through this weird tradition. In a sense, there’s something faintly admirable and democratic about it. Many countries don’t allow independent journalism at all. Those that do certainly do not allow cabinet secretaries to be assailed by snarling ranks of reporters. In the US and Europe, the culture works to protect the dignity of the minister, something that is basically alien to British political life.

It is also utterly vacuous. No journalist shouting expects to have the minister answer their question. No minister acknowledges the howls of the press. It is all theatre: vivid, distracting, and really quite completely meaningless. There isn’t even a purpose to the walk itself. There are plenty of other ways........

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