The most memorable thing about Keir Starmer’s resignation speech yesterday was not the resignation. It was the soundtrack. As the Prime Minister tearfully announced his intention to depart Downing Street, the veteran anti-Brexit campaigner Steve Bray began blasting Beethoven’s ‘Ode to Joy’ across Whitehall. 

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I was initially mildly surprised that modern broadcast technology proved incapable of filtering out a single protester with a loudspeaker somewhere down the road. As the speech dragged into its second minute, I was no longer entirely certain which audio I most wanted removed. 

The great joke of the morning was that ‘Ode to Joy’ is a piece about reconciliation. The most important words in the entire symphony are not the famous chorus but the interruption that precedes it. ‘O Freunde, nicht diese Töne!’ (Enough of this. Let us try something else). 

It is one of the most startling moments in music. After an hour of struggle, Beethoven appears to lose patience with the argument itself. The old themes are discarded. Human voices enter.........

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