Last weekend, as the world wondered whether Donald Trump would swipe Greenland, Keir Starmer made his own big geographic intervention: he published a map of which councils were fixing potholes.

Yes, potholes. Yes, a map. Barely 18 months into office, with crucial elections just ahead and his party lagging behind the ragtag troops of Nigel Farage and even Kemi Badenoch, this was how Team Starmer kicked off 2026. To be fair, as the young people say, the map is colour-coded.

Then the prime minister got tough. Spurred on by fury at Grok, the AI service that doubles as a factory for child porn, he threatened Elon Musk’s X with losing the “right to self-regulate”. No 10 doubtless considers this fighting talk, but no one would call it action. For that, look to other countries, which simply went ahead and suspended X.

This week, tens of thousands of families and schools and pubs and restaurants across Kent and Sussex have had no water. For the second time this winter South East Water has deprived customers of one of life’s essentials. So glaring is the company’s failure that Tory MPs – true-blue, laissez-faire, privateer-loving sprogs of Thatcher – are demanding its boss quit, while Ed Davey’s Liberal Democrats want its licence confiscated. So how has Starmer responded? By declaring the fiasco – wait for it – “totally unacceptable”. That’s telling them!

This is not another newspaper column on the redundancy of our prime minister, because such pieces are themselves redundant. From day one, the public has been way ahead of most of the press and besides, when the cheap shops are flogging anti-Starmer Christmas cards, you know that next December Downing Street will have a new occupant.

Nor am I going to hymn........

© The Guardian