© SALLY ANDERSON NEWS / ALAMY
Worried about the state of the world and reviews of my new book, I have retreated to the kitchen to think about something else. I am trying again to make brioche. This is an egg- and butter-rich dough that produces something between cake and bread. Jewish grandmothers seem to know by instinct how to produce it as challah; spread with butter and honey it accounts for the heart attacks of many Jewish grandfathers. For the rest of us, preparing the dough by hand is an exhausting challenge: knead too little, and the ingredients don’t meld; knead too much, and the dough becomes a rock. Machine kneading never seems to produce the right consistency. Once again, I kneaded too much. No doubt my kitchen failure is a sign of inability to leave things well enough alone.
There was no respite in the kitchen from politics either. Keir Starmer and his crew face a problem like making brioche—whether to do too little or too much. Unlike brioche dough, which has to rest overnight in the fridge in order to rise, Keir hasn’t much time; people want him to produce results right away. One change will happen immediately. The quality of his ministers will be infinitely superior to those of the Tory regime these past years (who, just to push the kitchen metaphor, are like eggs that are far past their sell-by date). Tory rot will be hard to clean out in institutions such as the BBC, but I think many civil servants are going to welcome the opportunity at last to do good work.