Following the Brexit referendum, one would have thought that Britain’s political class would be wary of launching unnecessary battles in which there’s no certainty of victory and divisiveness is a foregone conclusion. But apparently Labour’s parliamentarians didn’t get the memo.

Say what you want about the Tories – and I have – they know how to implode with style. Their betrayals are brazen; their concessions are dramatic; their calculations are brutal. Treachery, buffoonery and incompetence on a scale few could imagine is followed by orderly transition and a leader they can live with. They may be wrecking the country, but their party has emerged intact.

I was feeding someone else’s baby with a spoon the other day, a task I last performed about 15 years ago. It’s not difficult – the child knows what it’s doing – but there are little tricks of timing to keep the food from getting all over you, which I regained pretty quickly. I also find it helpful to engage in a one-sided conversation – a rambling, moronic narration of the event – as a distraction. I think it was always me I was trying to distract.

If there was a single lesson politicians should have learned from the last few months, beyond the fact that a significant proportion of the population don’t trust them, it’s that it if you’re going to fabricate a crisis that will lead to division and rancour, you should at the very least have a plan B.

In a country where it’s easier to obtain a semi-automatic gun than to obtain healthcare, a fragile mind can wreak havoc on a fragile political culture. So it was on Thursday night when a shooter opened fire on police at a Black Lives Matter demonstration killing five officers and wounding at least seven others.