Our years of magical thinking

I write this from the front line of a Croatian idyll, an aquamarine bay of a beautiful Dalmatian island in the Adriatic.

- Andrew Anthony

As the cicadas chatter and a leisurely breakfast slips into lunch, it’s easy to forget the troubles of the world.

Or it would be if our villa didn’t have high-speed broadband to bring us up to date with the latest setback to peace in the Middle East and that tragicomic soap opera that is now British politics. As I write, PM Keir Starmer has announced his plan to resign before Parliament resumes in September.

He’s been forced out, not because he’s an ineffective prime minister, although he is. But because he’s fallen victim to the political class’s commitment to an illusion.

The country faces huge problems: crippling national debt, a chronic lack of growth, vast numbers of the young without jobs, an ever-expanding welfare bill, an unaffordable pension system, high taxation, unsustainable legal and illegal migration, a massive housing shortage and a defence budget that is so withered a Russian warship recently felt able to fire warning shots at a retired couple on a yacht in the English Channel!