There’s a common thread for most of the malaise in Britain: Brexit

The decision to leave the European Union will not stop shaping this country anytime soon. Even if we wish to move on, it cannot be ignored, writes Marie Le Conte

Brexit is still everywhere we look (PA)

There was a point a few years ago, in 2019 I think, when writing about Brexit began to feel like having lost a bet. I’d left a full-time reporting job two years earlier for a range of reasons, one of them being that I could not face the prospect of writing about the B-word every day for months and years.

I then spent some time writing around Brexit; trying to avoid it whenever I could and, when I couldn’t, opting for quirky or obscure angles. I wished something would finally knock it off the political agenda and, somewhere in the distance, a monkey’s paw had curled.

Until recently I did not write about Brexit and neither did most political journalists. There were, you may have noticed, bigger things to worry about. Still, with the virus now becoming less of a concern, other topics have begun returning to the surface.