Will we always have Paris?

There are times when you might be fooled into believing all is well. I had a moment of such weakness the other day when I saw our new Prime Minister welcoming his European counterparts to a summit at Blenheim Palace. When Keir Starmer came down the steps to greet King Charles, he even did a pretty good job of pretending he wasn’t just Airbnb-ing the place for a few days.

At such points our country can look at peace. The English baroque architecture stood out against a blue sky and everything in England seemed to go on as it should.

If the Olympics go off safely it will be because of months of preparation by every arm of law enforcement

Of course, at the same time people in Leeds were turning over police cars and burning the place down. It took a while to find out even roughly what was happening, and no one seemed especially interested in trying. Still, it is sometimes hard to reconcile both of these things going on in the same country. On the one hand, the usual social order; on the other, a mess caused by generations of politicians who have turned coherent societies into pretty incoherent ones and high-trust societies into low-trust ones.

If he ever cogitates on this, at least Starmer can console himself with the knowledge that he isn’t the only leader in charge of such a country. He wasn’t even the only one at Blenheim. Emmanuel Macron also reigns over a country which maintains a calm surface. Walk around the centre of Paris today and you will see architecture that remains magnificent and people going about life with a tiny bit more joy than the British. In short, the postcard seems intact.