Only the Lonely.

Strange as it may sound, the British Prime Minister recently created the new cabinet post of ‘Minister for Loneliness.’ It sounds a bit of a narrow brief, doesn’t it? You’d be forgiven for wondering whether you’d slipped through a time warp and landed on April 1^st, wouldn’t you?

Ah, but here’s one fascinating statistic which I gather was in part responsible for this strangely humanitarian act: Some expert or other has posited the view that loneliness is as detrimental to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. I wonder who came up with that one; and I further wonder whether, since smoking in confined public places is now illegal in Britain, being lonely in confined private spaces might also soon be the subject of punitive legislation. And since I’m guilty on both counts, I don’t suppose there’s much hope for me.

OK, I do accept that loneliness is a problem in the modern world where family and community connections are not what they used to be, but creating a ministerial post to address such a narrow issue seems over the top to the point of being freaky. Isn’t loneliness the remit of community workers and charities? Besides, whoever heard of a Tory Prime Minister being in the least concerned about an issue mostly to be found among the hoi-polloi? (I gather loneliness is most frequently encountered by the more elderly members of the... erm... lower orders.)

I think this must be the biggest mystery in the political world at the moment, bigger even than Trump’s height and weight or the perennial question of how a man of his calibre managed to get America’s top job.