When he arrived in 2010, he was surrounded by people who looked like him – and shared some of the same assumptions. Then, as the world changed in unimaginable ways, he watched in horror as the people in charge failed to change with it
It is December 2015. I am the minister for flooding. (I am also the minister for forestry, for national parks, for nature, for chemicals, for air quality, for waste and recycling, for water and much more than can be written on a business card). I knew almost nothing about any of these topics when, six months earlier, the prime minister, David Cameron, made me minister for these things. It may have been a mistake. In a recent meeting he has given me the impression that he believes I am the minister for agriculture.
Exactly 341mm of rain has fallen in the last 24 hours – the highest rainfall ever recorded in the United Kingdom. More than 60,000 houses in Lancaster have lost power, and the epicentre of the flooding is my own constituency in Cumbria. I have been wading into front rooms, filled with dirty water above the level of the mantle-shelves, their interiors a swirling mess of photo albums and wooden furniture.
