I have always tended to think – against a great deal of evidence I must admit – that many other things are fundamentally more important than politics. I learned Samuel Johnson’s lines when I was a schoolboy and though much has changed since those far-off, dreamlike days the lines still contain a proportion of truth:
How small, of all that human hearts endure,
That part which laws or kings can cause or cure.
Still to ourselves in every place consigned,
Our own felicity we make or find.