There has been a familiar feeling in the air for a while, but not one I could identify until last week, when it finally settled. It is a sense that this Labour government is just as terminally dysfunctional and directionless as its predecessor. I am beginning to feel the same sense of frustration, confusion, anger and depletion that I carried through all those years of Conservative government.

Here we are again, with the pettiness and authoritarianism, the performatively cruel rhetoric and crackdown on immigration, the ridiculous posturing on flags, the empty sloganeering – and with the constant rebooting in order to jumpstart a broken machine. The result is that government has been reduced to the same intrusive and meaningless background noise: Keir Starmer droning on about “phase two” or “delivery, delivery, delivery”. There is a sense that it’s pointless to insist that Labour can do better, be better – because it is structurally incapable of doing so.

The overwhelming feeling under this government is sometimes that of drift, at other times of heading at speed towards a crash. Either way, the destination seems to be Reform UK having more power than should be possible with so many grownups around. It all seems, above everything, a colossal wasted opportunity for a party that sailed in on a large majority, with an eviscerated opposition and a moment ripe for the taking.

At least with the Tories it was clear why........

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