‘It’s now becoming easier and easier to predict government policy. Just listen to what the prime minister said in the morning and the opposite is likely to be true come the middle of the afternoon.’

Throughout another year of bluster and bedlam in Westminster, John Crace’s brilliantly acerbic political sketches have once more provided the nation with a much-needed injection of humour.

In A Farewell to Calm, Crace introduces an infectiously funny selection of his finest pieces from 2020-21, taking in everything from a summer of unfathomable U-turns to Christmas Covid confusion, and from lockdown-lifting to Brexit blithering.

Led by Boris’s poundshop Churchill tribute act, and featuring a cast of everyone’s least favourite pantomime villains, from Classic Dom Cummings to Door Matt Hancock, the end result is a brilliantly entertaining chronicle of another tumultuous year on these benighted islands.