Notes from the Underground with David Aaronovitch

A few years ago I was with my daughter Rosa at a football match - a big FA Cup game - and there was the usual assumption on behalf of the crowd of 30,000 that the future of the world rested on the outcome. In the 41st minute an opposition player suddenly went down. Perhaps there was the jovial cry of “get up!”; I don’t remember. But this guy lay on the pitch and suddenly other players were signalling to the referee and the physios that something was badly wrong.

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Photo Darryl Dick, Canadian Press Gianni Infantino long ago stopped being a man and became a symbol of this particular moment. Infantino with Putin, Infantino with Trump, Infantino with this Emir and that Crown Prince and the other Kushner, Infantino inventing a peace prize, Infantino justifying bending the rules of his own sport to accommodate a presidential whim, Infantino announcing a get-rich-quick scheme which promises big bucks in return for the sale of your soul.

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At the Communist party events that my parents used to take me to in the 1960s — usually a rally in support of some cause or other — I often noticed a small elderly man wearing a woollen jacket and an old-fashioned smoking cap, who reminded me of Mole in The Wind in the Willows.

The Greens are now Your Party. And I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. In early May Zack Polanski (née Paulden) saluted the local council results with a brave statement not about the future, but about the present: “It is very clear,” said Mr P, “that the new politics is the Green Party versus Reform.” There are some words in the English language that, in common usage, often mean the opposite of what the user is trying to say.

The public eclipse of one man and the sunrise of another is a rich quarry for the mining of metaphor. As I think I have just proved. Some are visual. The New Statesman magazine, which practically launched the Starmer Out, Burnham In campaign last September, chose yet another Bayeux Tapestry take-off for its Starmer resignation cover. Naturally Andy Burnham was William the Conqueror and Keir Starmer was Harold and, tellingly, the Norman Conquest had become the Northern Conquest.

MG to his companion, Derek: Let me look at the pic. The smile and the pint! Just like you-know-who and I think my smile is a bit better now, don’t you? A bit more authentic. And it hurts less than it used to. So (opens site on his phone) I’ll post it on X and Facebook. Just needs a clever message. Something patriotic and ordinary working bloke-like as well as having a funny dig at poor old Two-tier. Types on his phone. MG reads: “When England’s playing and Keir Starmer just resigned”. Perfect.

For sixty years Israel has enjoyed an almost militant goodwill in America. The reason has not been the all-powerful Israeli lobby, though of course there is one just as there is an oil lobby, a Saudi lobby, a tech lobby, and most murderous of all, a gun lobby. To US administrations Israel represented an occasionally infuriating ally in a strategic but alien region.

In three weeks’ time, in the local, Scottish and Welsh elections, the government will get hammered and the commentating class will demand a leadership challenge to the prime minister, the line between commentator and campaigner becoming increasingly blurred. Perhaps this will stir up the necessary 80 Labour MPs to back a challenger to Keir Starmer, but if I had to put my money where my cursor is, I’d bet against it. Fortunate in opposition, Keir Starmer has not been a lucky prime minister.