I've become thoroughly sick of politics during 2023 - here's why: Bill Carmichael

Luckily, they were not terrorists planting explosives, but self-indulgent Greenpeace demonstrators complaining about something or other, but if the police and security services cannot protect the Prime Minister’s family home, what hope is there for the rest of us?

Or take the issue of immigration, something opinion polls show is of concern to the public with increasing pressures on housing, health and schools with record numbers coming in.

But despite many promises to get a grip, successive Conservative governments have failed miserably to control the numbers, with the result that net immigration reached a record 745,000 in 2022.

Rishi Sunak’s latest plan, to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, has been continually thwarted by legal challenges, and may not be implemented before the next election.

The Rwanda plan might work - who knows? But nobody, including the Labour Party, has any better ideas. The result of this mess is the impression that we are a country entirely incapable of one of the key functions of a nation state - controlling our borders.

Neither are we a country, it seems, that can complete the relatively simple task of building a railway between Birmingham and Manchester - something our Victorian ancestors would have finished in a matter of months.

In October, after billions of pounds had already been spent, the government announced that the Western leg of HS2 was to be scrapped. We were promised that the £36 billion saved will be spent on other transport projects in the north and Midlands.

But after the Eastern leg of HS2 to Leeds was scrapped earlier, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the North is getting a very raw deal in terms of government investment.

Is it any wonder that the North lags behind London in terms of productivity when a huge proportion of government money is spent to improve transport in the already rich and well served South East. Whatever happened to “levelling up”?

Talking of transport and things not working properly, 2023 was a year of strikes with a whole range of employees taking industrial action including train drivers, teachers, university lecturers, junior doctors, consultants, nurses and ambulance staff, to name a few.

The result has not only been transport misery for millions of people, but NHS waiting lists reaching a record high in September with 7.7 million people waiting for treatment in England.

The strikers must be immensely proud of their achievements.

Another aspect of national life that is clearly not working properly is the seemingly interminable legal proceedings of the official Covid enquiry which will drag on for months, if not years, in the manner of Jarndyce vs Jarndyce in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House.

This was an ideal opportunity to find out what went wrong in the pandemic, and what went right, and how we can better prepare for the next virus to escape from a Chinese lab, as it inevitably will.

Instead the hearings have become little more than a job creation scheme for wealthy lawyers, obsessed with trivia, gossip and tittle tattle. Who said what about who, what naughty words were used, how people were mean to each other, the backstabbing and intrigue.

I don’t think I am alone when I say I don’t care a jot about any of this, but I would like to know whether the lockdowns, and the misery, poverty and mental health problems they caused, made much difference to the eventual death toll.

There was a bit of light relief in May with the King’s Coronation. Even if you are not a royalist at least you could enjoy an extra day’s bank holiday.

For me the most moving aspect of the ceremony was the religious part. Amid the pomp, the pageantry and the splendour, Charles was stripped of his fine ermines and silks right down to a simple shirt, to be anointed and make his promises before God.

If he keeps those promises half as well as his mother, we will do a good job.

All in all 2023 was the year when I became thoroughly sick of politics and things not working properly any more.

Will 2024 be different? It is likely to be an election year, so the answer is no.