Why this Downing Street debacle doesn’t matter

Do you know who Lee Cain is? If your answer is yes, you are unusual, an aberrant departure from the norm. If you know who he is and care a jot about him and his career, you’re a freak.

Wall-to-wall coverage of Cain’s departure from Downing Street reminds me why I’m so glad I stopped being a Lobby reporter, and demonstrates everything that’s wrong with our political-media culture. It’s part of the national sickness that means so many people ignore or disdain politics as something distant and irrelevant to their lives. And actually, as far as this story is concerned, they’re right, because goings-on in No. 10 really are irrelevant.

So why do journalists write so much about things like Cain’s departure, and spend so much time speculating about the future of Dominic Cummings or whoever? I know the nominal reasons for this: the functioning of the No. 10 machine matters for the effectiveness of government and the working relationship between the PM, his ministers and Parliament.