The characteristic I most admire in politicians? Petulance

Many negative qualities are ascribed to politicians — name-calling, absenteeism, drunkenness — but you rarely hear of my favourite political emotion: petulance, which has caused us so much public entertainment in the political arena and promises to cause so much more.

Think of Dominic Raab refusing to accept his demotion until he was made Deputy Prime Minister; the spat between Liz Truss and Dominic Raab over who gets to stay at Chevening; Angela Rayner’s scathing letter on Commons notepaper to a Brighton shoe shop after it failed to put a pair of £195 heels aside for her; the spectacular Starmer meltdown in February when Sir Keir went ‘puce’ and kept hissing at Boris Johnson ‘It’s not true, it’s not true!’ for all the world like a teenage girl denying rumours of sexual generosity.

For a man of principle, supposedly uninterested in personalities, Jeremy Corbyn was extraordinarily petulant — and his petulance wasn’t amusing, unlike many others.