My family, like so many others across the UK, celebrated last Christmas virtually. Where there would usually be a festive photo of us all around a table strewn with empty plates and half-full glasses and the remnants of crackers, paper hats at jaunty angles on our heads, there is only a screenshot: three little windows into three little Christmases on three different sofas at opposite ends of the country.
This is especially painful for me to think about because it was, though none of us could have known it at the time, my grandma’s last Christmas on this earth – and she spent it largely on her own. A Christmas dinner for one delivered by a local restaurant for her to eat in front of the telly.
It is this image, of my grandma alone in her flat, as she was for almost the entire 18 months preceding her death in July, that brought me to tears last night when I watched the video, filmed on 22 December 2020, of Boris Johnson’s then press secretary, Allegra Stratton, rehearsing for one of the government’s proposed daily TV briefings. In the footage, obtained by ITV News, Stratton stands behind a podium on stage and fields questions from Ed Oldfield, the prime minister’s adviser, who takes on the role of a journalist in the audience.
