This election has dragged party leaders to a new level of pathology. One that may be beyond treatment

I’m not sure what the protocols are for these sorts of events, but the sight of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn attending the vigil for Jack Merritt and Saskia Jones, who were killed in the London Bridge terrorist attack, felt like shameless political grandstanding: a desire to be seen to be doing the right thing, rather than heartfelt sympathy. And judging by what Jack’s father later wrote about the prime minister he would probably have also preferred Johnson to be a no show. Shortly after the vigil, various members of one of my WhatsApp groups expressed much the same feeling and we made a promise to actively prevent politicians from pitching up at our funerals or hospital beds if we were killed or injured in a terrorist attack or some other major incident. Should the prime minister, or any other political leader, try to muscle in on my family’s grief, I want a security detail to escort them off the premises. If they insist on making statements “to express the nation’s feelings” they can do so via a video-link from their own bedrooms. And there will be no need for them to worry about looking as if they didn’t give a toss by not attending, because my friends will have put out a statement to the media saying they were NFI. Not that I have given much thought to what sort of funeral I do want, though I’ve always thought how weird it must have been for the Queen Mother to look out of her bedroom window and watch the military rehearsing for hers. But my friend Simone has her funeral arrangements totally sorted. While her close friend Ali was dying of cancer, she dreamed of her own funeral – the music, the readings – in its entirety. When she woke up she remembered everything, thought it to be just perfect, and wrote out her instructions. I’m still waiting for that dream.