Starmer, Burnham, Farage Polanski: they make a week in politics feel like an eternity in Hades | Marina Hyde

It’s your life in their hands, but what kind of life is that? No wonder a wearied, confused public has mobilised into tribes – or just tuned out On the basis that you’re never too cooked to get a new catchphrase, Keir Starmer has repeatedly warned this week that we are in a “battle for the soul of our nation”. I wish he’d stop saying it. The thought of your very soul being fought over by Nigel Farage, Keir Starmer, Zack Polanski, Kemi Badenoch and the others is like something out of a sealed section in Dante’s Inferno. If it was on an underworld menu, I think I’d choose the Satanic Flaying instead. Anyway: enter Andy Burnham. Plus, we now have coordinates. The battle for the soul of the nation will take place not in the tenth circle of hell, but in Makerfield. Local MP and appalling little footnote Josh Simons has stood down so that the King in the North has a route to King’s Landing, where – I think? – he has to kill his auntie after accidentally shagging her. Labour party procedures are very arcane. As is this entire byelection, where the dynamics are so nuts that they could very possibly tear open some kind of gate into the political upside down that only a preternaturally gifte