Let me tell you about an intense time in British politics: one where Scotland’s hate speech legislation came into force, the final Cass Review into paediatric gender medicine was published, a UK general election was called, and Nigel Farage made a triumphant political return.

Throughout, J. K. Rowling tweeted.

On June 3, Farage left his quondam job as telly broadcaster for GBNews and announced a tilt at Parliament. On Tuesday—the same day PM Rishi Sunak and Leader of the Opposition Sir Keir Starmer held the first of several televised debates—a protester threw a McDonald’s banana milkshake over Farage. He was campaigning in Clacton, the Essex constituency he’s targeting.

Despite their best efforts (and that of the British press), top billing went to Nigel’s milkshake, not Rishi and Keir’s telly debate.

Farage’s dramatic entrance brackets off an extraordinary period. Only now the country has passed into election season (our campaigns, as Americans often note, are mercifully short), only now the civil service is in purdah—and nothing happens for six weeks—is it possible to describe a moment of national madness with any equanimity.