It’s unclear if recent PMs are big fans of Samuel Beckett. They might be, but they’re keeping quiet about it.

The taciturn Irish Nobel laureate has been invoked many times when the interminable nature of post-Brexit British politics is discussed – a dark farce in which everyone is waiting for something to happen, but carrying the knowledge that nothing probably will.

Still, since David Cameron, there has been a very focused application of Beckett’s ‘fail better’ dictum. May, Johnson, the laughable/terrifying interregnum of Truss, Sunak and now Starmer, have all ultimately failed.

If they are following Beckett, they’re doing so by misunderstanding. When he wrote “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better”, there was a simple subtextual notice to learn from the mistakes. It appears that British prime ministers are reading ‘better’ as ‘more’. And boy, are they hitting that one hard.

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Obviously Starmer is not out yet. But if he’s PM by Christmas, he’s Lazarus. That trick worked once and there’s no real sign it’s coming again.

Quite why British leaders keep failing and getting the boot is a question that will fill many doctoral theses in the coming years.

This current cycle started with austerity, that callous Tory experiment in punishing the poorest for the banks’ failures. It sliced through the social fabric, cutting essential services to the bone, meaning benefits were inevitably going to rise as community........

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