Britain is a bastion of stability again. As Europe pivots right, America regresses, and Putin menaces the world, our happy home is sane once more. The unmentionables are out of government, the untouchables on the back foot, and the unquestionables in the ascendency. The Financial Times is bullish. Andrew Marr says the money’s pouring in. Brussels is fluttering its lashes at us. Olympic opening ceremonies, the height of cultural sophistication, are en vogue once more. The serenity is palpable. The swagger unstoppable. Yes folks, the twenties, slightly later than billed, are roaring again: the grownups are back in charge. 

There may have been some trying times of late, but I think we can all agree (put that down) that we can see the improvements already. A sensible approach to government (I said down) has been sorely lacking, but now we have a prime minister and chancellor (indoor voices, please) who understand (is that smoke?) what needs to be done (can you not use that word?) to get the economy back on track, (that’s definitely smoke) provide a more progressive approach to solving crime (call 999) and create a fair, compassionate immigration system (I think we need to leave) that serves both the interests of the labour market (the door’s locked!) and shelters the world’s (break it down!) most vulnerable (*muffled screams*).

Waking up on July 5 to the news that Sir Keir Starmer and his Cabinet of women with fringes would be lecturing us for the next half decade would have been bad enough if it hadn’t been accompanied by an outpouring of relief from various sections of Britain’s heaving commentariat that, somehow, an age of immaturity was over. 

We got it from all corners — broadsheets, broadcasters, and of course the section of Twitter who told us they were leaving in 2016. “Is it just me but suddenly everything feels  … normal?” asked one user bearing a remarkable likeness to Anna Soubry. “We have a government who for now look like grown-ups unified and in charge,” added someone called Mariella Frostrup. 

You can hardly blame them — they have been waiting for this a long time. When Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump to become president, Democrat-adjacent outlets in the US proudly informed the world that business as it once was had been restored — that the (admittedly rather wizened) adults had removed the bawling toddler from the White House, and that we could look forward to an indefinite period of sensible behaviour and modest growth. Across the water in colonial afterthought Britain, very grown-up liberals wailed and gnashed their teeth that the “charlatan” Boris Johnson and “lettuce” Liz Truss were in power, and threw their hands up in exasperation that “Dishy Rishi” wasn’t the stabilising force they had hoped for.

However, by summer 2021, Afghanistan was on fire, and before long that old illiberal rotter, Vladimir Vladimirovich, had done the thoroughly un-grownup thing of invading a neighbouring sovereign state once destined to be subsumed by the West instead. The adults in the White House, meanwhile, turned out to be so wizened that grey matter began dripping from their nostrils mid-sentence. The promise of maturity turned out to be about as constructive as the much maligned “populism” that preceded it.

Yet having seen what happens when you tempt Fate, Britain’s sensibles, champing at the bit, were not to be denied their moment. The new “government of service” began by performing basic functions, like appointing people to ministerial positions, which garnered it rapturous applause from the stalls. It even elevated some who had worked outside politics, including putting unelected people in the Lords, which is a very grownup thing to do when you aren’t a charlatan, a lettuce or a Russian stooge.

Then the government did something else that was very mature, announcing that the prisons were full, that many criminals would be released forthwith, and that the UK jails too many people anyway, setting out a plan to fundamentally change the way a country already run by lawyers metes out justice. 

An admirable sentiment. A noble position. A thoroughly grownup approach to tackling the scourge of crime. That in the weeks that followed the country has seen a spate of murders, gang violence and full-on rioting from Plymouth to Tyneside via Belfast and Bristol is by-the-by, and I’m sure has nothing to do with the government telling tens of thousands of miscreants and opportunists: our guard is down — no time like the present.

Censor the internet! Bring back emergency covid measures! Anything, other than addressing the problems themselves

This is not the place to delve further into the litany of things the adults are already getting wrong. But it is, perhaps, a place to ponder what the reaction to this from those who yearned for normality may be. Because, like it or not, this is a class of person who does not deal well with disappointment. Britain’s middle class is used to getting its way. That things have slowly begun slipping in the past few decades has not gone unnoticed, and to a cohort of people raised on feel-good fantasy stories where sensible good always triumphs over idiotic evil (usually Nazis) the prospect of any alternative ending is genuinely terrifying. 

In the aftermath of the Southport knife attack, Downing Street and Parliament were lit up in pink lights — lighting now considered a more subdued, tasteful gesture to the garish approach of spontaneously breaking into a chorus of “Don’t Look Back in Anger” when something truly horrific has happened to small children. That was supposed to be the end of it. The subsequent violence, and howls of anguish from the wings, has highlighted just how unsettled, and out of control, the grown ups really are. Out have come the usual suggestions — send in the army! Censor the internet! Bring back emergency covid measures! Anything, other than addressing the problems themselves.