The Stockholm Archipelago is wonderful this summer, if rather over-baked; and a good place to get away from Brexit, Trump and the awful ‘anti-semitism’ row; but those three still plague my nights, and add to my endemic depression, which always flares up worst at four in the mornings. I have to say I feel pretty desperate just now.

Was there ever a worse time in modern British politics? My current holiday reading is Robert Harris’s Munich.  1938 ought to have been more depressing than today. But at least the only madman then was on the other side, and there seemed to be straightforward ways of avoiding disaster: either by averting war, or by uniting patriotically to fight it. It’s difficult to see a way out of our present existential mess that doesn’t leave half the country alienated, bitter and mean.

Maybe it would be more straightforward if Corbyn were replaced by a Labour leader who was more unequivocally against Brexit. (My daughter, here last week, has almost persuaded me of this.) Or Corbyn might be swayed this way as public opinion turns against Brexit and its ‘madmen’, just before the next election. Then it might be a better political tide to ride.