The Megxit drama made me grateful my family never disowned me
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Version 0 of 1. Harry and Meghan trying to break away from the royals remind us all families are complicated Monday I would feel rather more rested after a two-week break if I didn’t have to take myself on holiday with me. It would be rather a relief to have some time off from near constant feelings of anxiety and dread. It feels like rather an invasion of privacy to have my thoughts and dreams still dominated by the messiness of UK and global politics. Not to mention football. But then I am often my own worst enemy. We went away to an Airbnb on the Welsh border with a couple of friends for five days. The house was advertised as having internet access but it turned out there was scarcely even a phone signal, so keeping up with the possible outbreak of the third world war was probably nearly as stressful for me as it was for Boris Johnson on his sun lounger in Mustique. The lowest point was sitting on my own in the car outside a pub – the only place I could get a signal – on New Year’s Day to watch the Spurs game against Southampton. It was the perfect exercise in masochism. I’m not quite sure why I care so much about a team that clearly no longer gives a toss about itself. For 90 minutes I got steadily colder and more depressed as darkness fell while Spurs went from the merely bad to the totally clueless. However once the game was over, I felt weirdly almost content. There was no longer any danger of being drawn to the footballing antichrist of José Mourinho. There was, if not a safety, then at least a comforting familiarity in being once more without hope. My therapist has a lot of work to do. Tuesday The first day back in parliament and the difference between the two tribes could not be clearer. Labour MPs are still wandering around in a state of trauma and can barely raise their heads to look one another in the eye, let alone be bothered to seriously challenge the government. There’s just no point. Everything feels a bit futile. The Tories meanwhile are all smiles and are wandering around as if they own the place. Which, of course, they now do. What the Conservatives really mean by uniting the country and moving on is that anyone who wanted to remain in the EU should just suck up the fact that they had lost. There are to be no olive branches on offer. Johnson couldn’t even be bothered to come to the Commons to give a statement on the US assassination of Qassem Suleimani. He was sunburnt, had jetlag and it was too much hassle to get involved when there was a trade deal with the US to be negotiated later in the year. Even Chris Grayling was looking more chipper than I have seen him in ages. Clearly being demoted from cabinet has been a liberation for him. No more sense of daily despair at his complete uselessness. A smart publisher would be bidding for his memoirs. You’d get the rights for next to nothing and it could become the comedy bestseller of the year. The one Tory to look miserable was Jeremy Hunt, who is now bitterly regretting his brief outbreak of principle in refusing to serve in Johnson’s cabinet and made a pitiful brown-nosing plea for a return to office during the Iran debate. Just a shame Boris wasn’t there to ignore him. Wednesday It’s not immediately clear to me how Meghan and Harry plan to square away some of their privileges – sell their Windsor home and give back the public money spent on its renovation to the Treasury? – with their decision to break away from the royal family, but my gut reaction is good on them for choosing to give it a go. Not least because Piers Morgan and Sarah Vine have been in the vanguard of those queuing to put the boot in. If in doubt, it’s generally safe to do the opposite of these two. The announcement could have been handled a little better, but we should be applauding a relatively minor royal – Harry is sixth in line to the throne and likely to descend further down the succession pecking order at some point – who wants to become financially independent and doesn’t want to sit around at home while the tabloid press continues to do to his wife what it did to his mother. After all, it’s not as if Prince Andrew or Prince Edward have done the monarchy any favours by staying put. Fair play also to the Queen for getting stuck in. After various senior members of the royal household had given snarky anonymous briefings to the media, it rather looks as if Her Maj took charge and told everyone to sod off. Even if the situation wasn’t ideal she wanted to try and find a way of making it work. When push came to shove, she cared more about her relationship with, and the mental health of, her grandson and Meghan than royal protocol. Families are complicated. There have been several times in my life when my own family could easily have disowned me for some of the choices I made. I am profoundly grateful that they stuck by me when almost everyone else had given up. Thursday A small moment of political history as Stephen Barclay faced his last question session before his Brexit department is wound up at the end of the month. The decision to shut down the department has been taken partly to signal that Brexit has been done – even if it hasn’t – but mainly to limit scrutiny of the future trade negotiations. Most of the hour in the Commons, however, was taken up with Tory MPs enquiring what national celebrations should take place on 31 January. Amid much talk of special ales, flag-flying and Big Ben ringing, no one thought to mention the “festival of Brexit” that Boris has previously indicated should be a centre-piece of the celebrations. This could be because most artists are remainers and wouldn’t be seen dead appearing at the event. If the festival does go ahead, the one person the government should not appoint as its creative director is Robert Jenrick, the housing, communities and local government minister. Having realised he needed to do something for various towns in the Midlands and the north that it had always previously ignored as they were considered safe Labour seats, Jenrick chose to launch his new Towns Fund and Town of the Year competition from Wolverhampton. Which just happens to have been upgraded to a city in 2000 after a long local campaign. Jenrick spent most of the launch desperately trying to cover his back by suggesting that all cities were basically towns and all towns were cities in disguise. To compound the error, Jenrick grew up just outside Wolverhampton. Nice to see he’s always taken such interest in his roots. Friday There is something charmingly Tiggerish about the way Matt Hancock champions the NHS, but sooner or later he is actually going to have to deliver on his promises. Only this week the December data revealed that all A&E departments had had their worst ever month in terms of missing performance targets. Luckily for the government, Labour was far too busy following the “will he, won’t he” saga of Barry Gardiner’s leadership bid to make too much fuss. Hancock is also going to have his work cut out to improve mental health services. A new report from the Education Policy Institute has found that one in four children who have been referred for help are being refused treatment on the grounds their condition is not considered serious enough. So presumably these kids either have to pull themselves together or wait for their condition to get bad enough for them to qualify. I care passionately about this, not least because my own mental health has been so fragile for much of my life. But I am one of the lucky ones because I have had the money to get help. Some of my treatment has come courtesy of the NHS, but some of it has been paid for privately. There have been times in my life when waiting months and months, hoping for a referral that might never come, was not a realistic option. I needed help urgently and I have no doubt that if I had not been able to get it I would not be alive today. There must be many thousands of people with similar problems who weren’t so financially well-off and didn’t live to get help. My mental health issues span more than four decades and in that time – despite repeated promises from successive governments – nothing has changed. If anything provision has got worse. Over to you, Matt. Digested week, digested: Megxit |