Ten or so days ago, I was embroiled in a truly absurd public transport ordeal. Because the train drivers’ union was going on strike, travelling from the West Country to London for an early start meant driving to Reading, overnighting in a hotel and then taking the Elizabeth line to the capital. Then, on the return journey, the same route came to a halt thanks to a train colliding with power lines. I was told about this while I was anxiously waiting at Paddington: my only option, it transpired, was to go to Waterloo, and get on a delayed branch-line commuter train – along with hundreds of other people in a similarly depressed and desperate state.

Most of us had to stand for at least an hour. But from the start of the journey, a lovely camaraderie started to kick in, infused with a soupçon of Christmas spirit. Two strangers discussed that night’s Spurs match. A fiftysomething father made small talk with a mum in her 20s who had managed to squeeze on with her baby buggy and two kids: “Wait till they’re teenagers, you won’t know what’s hit you.” The shared mood was full of that familiar sense that, in a country that no longer seems to work, such mishaps and failures happen all the time.

As the guard recited the long list of stations we would be calling at, I realised that the journey would be taking us through an affluent expanse of the home counties, and the kind of places that are still bywords for English Conservatism: Egham, Virginia Water, Sunningdale, Wokingham, Winnersh. For the entire day, I had been immersed in that day’s political news, and the febrile mood swirling around Rishi Sunak’s government. And in that context, the scene........

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