In the shadow of the Whaley Bridge dam

It was two days after the storm, or ‘extreme weather event’ as we call them now. I was trying to get into the Derbyshire town of Whaley Bridge, which sits below a reservoir with a crack in its dam wall. The reservoir had topped over during the night and the build-up of pressure meant the wall was beginning to crumble.

Fifteen hundred people in the town have been evacuated since the storm, with hardly even the time to pick up their keys. They have sought shelter in schoolhalls and with friends and acquaintances in nearby towns and villages.

The world’s media quickly descended on the town and before journalists could even scribble down ‘closely-knit communities’, the newly-installed Prime Minister Boris Johnson was parachuted in. He had a ride over the dam in a helicopter, and visited bemused Whaley Bridge refugees in a Chapel school gymnasium, urging them to carry on demonstrating the good old Brexit spirit that had won us two world wars.