Main character syndrome

This week: it’s not all about you, Prime Minister. Also, an official and objective ranking of London underground/overground line names; and my new favourite animal.

In 1655, Louis XIV of France – Europe’s most powerful ruler; the Sun King; still the longest reigning sovereign in recorded history – is supposed to have stood before the Parlement of Paris and dismissed its claims to challenge his authority. “L’etat, c’est moi,” he reportedly said: I am the state. 

The phrase is remembered as a symbol of the age of absolutism that European monarchs were, with varying degrees of success, moving into. Actually, though, absolute rule has generally been surprisingly hard to pull off. Medieval monarchs required support from nobles and church; the most successful Roman emperors worked with army or Senate, rather than imagining they could rule alone. (Augustus, significantly, spent the first and longest reign of any emperor pretending he wasn’t emperor at all.) Even Louis himself likely never spoke his most memorable quote. The words don’t appear in the parliament’s record, and on his deathbed, a frankly absurd six decades later, he is known to have uttered the apparently contradictory sentiment, “Je m’en vais, mais l’État demeurera toujours”: I’m going; but the state will always remain.

Britain, of course, has a parliamentary, rather than presidential, system, which is why we’ve lately changed Prime Minister as often as we’ve changed our socks; but this has not stopped several occupants of 10 Downing Street convincing themselves the political life of the nation revolves entirely around them. Boris Johnson became so convinced his government’s 80 seat majority was his, not his party’s, that he began referring to the self-preservation campaign he launched during partygate by the nauseating title of “Operation Save Big Dog”. That a mandate drawn from public support can be destroyed by public opprobrium, or that throwing his juniors under the bus might plausibly come back to haunt him, seems never to have occurred. 

Theresa May, too, seems at some point to have conflated the interests of the country/its government/her party/her own. How else to explain the fact that, despite the “sense of duty” her outriders kept telling us motivated her, she stacked her Cabinet with loyal incompetents like Chris Grayling and Karen Bradley. 

I mention all this because of the incredible admission incumbent Rishi Sunak made on local radio on Tuesday: that there won’t be an election until voters feel “things are improving”. The guff he went on to spout about “peace of mind” and a “renewed sense of pride” suggests he might actually believe this – that not holding an election with the country in this state is the right thing to do. 

It’s increasingly clear that many people, though, in a sort of reverse Brenda From Bristol moment, are desperate for an election. Partly that reflects a hunger for a change of government; but partly, too, I think it’s just because everyone knows we’re stuck. Until the election happens, nothing is going to change. No one will be honest about the state of the nation’s finances or public services; nothing is going to get fixed. The only people more delay might benefit, in fact, are Tory MPs hoping to retain their seats, and the Prime Minister supposed to lead them. Sunak seems genuinely to have convinced himself that his interests are also those of the state. 

You can understand how this happens. Sunak, like May before him, faces two challenges: ensuring his survival, and addressing national crisis. In the bunker, where endless questions about the former are yet another barrier to tackling the latter, it must be very easy to conflate the two. Whether the electorate agrees, however, is an entirely different question. 

Still. I’m sure that quite literally laughing at the public for asking when he might hold an election will win the waverers over any day now. 

Hey look, the new book exists! 

It’s not out for another three weeks, yet I got an email from my publisher this morning telling me the book had arrived? The timescales on which publishers work remain a mystery. Anyway, here it is now:

This week’s endorsement comes from much-missed former colleague Stephen Bush: “A brilliant account of how these lines on a map shape lives, destinies and economies. You’ll never look at a map in the same way again.” Pre-order here, it really helps later sales, yada yada yada. 

Right, back to the newsletter. I haven’t gone full tube nerd in ages, have I? Well:

A definitive and objective ranking of London’s Tube/Overground line names, based entirely on how much they annoy me personally

22. IFS Cloud Cable Car

Okay, TfL is broke, and most of the blame for this lies in the incompetence and malice of national government. Nonetheless there’s something intensely seedy about naming lines after companies for cash, not least the fact it means renaming them the minute a sponsorship deal runs out. (The switch from “Emirates Airline” has made the name less problematic but also, somehow, more depressing.) The only argument for not putting this one last I can think of is that it shouldn’t be on the list at all. 

21. London Trams

I can’t decide if it’s more annoying now than when it was Croydon Tramlink (more specific, but also more limiting) or just Tramlink (too close to Thameslink, with which it interacts). But it remains the name of a mode, rather than a line, and also entirely colourless. Will look even weirder on the map once the London Overground has names. 

20. Hammersmith & City

The decision to split this off from the Metropolitan Line in 1990 to give the route its own identity was the first change to the Tube Map I can remember, and the resulting excitement (a whole new colour!) is directly responsible for a sizeable chunk of my career. Distressing to admit, then, that it’s definitely the worst name for a tube line. It’s too long; two-thirds of the line’s stations are in neither Hammersmith nor the City; and worst of all it’s one of three different lines that today connect the two areas. Hate it. Get rid. Re-christen it Grenfell.