𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

We all know at least one. That colleague who resigns, drags themselves through their notice with one eye on the clock, and then on their last day enacts their revenge.

Small acts of workplace terrorism. They might crank the air conditioning to arctic temperatures, snapping off the dial when they’re done.

Or they could unplug every monitor and coil the cables into a Gordian knot no IT department shall ever untangle.

Sometimes they might swivel each chair to a subtly maddening new height, so that come Monday the entire office sits either like toddlers at a grown-up’s table or barristers peering down from the bench.

But all of it, every unplugged mouse, every pilfered stapler, is small fry compared with the parting gift Sir Keir Starmer has bequeathed to his successor, the Mancunian Messiah himself, Andy Burnham.

Soon Mr Burnham will haul his suitcase of eyeliner, Oasis albums and black suits up Downing Street. Home at last! Having schemed and beatified his way to the top of the greasy pole, he shall await his reward.

Years he has waited. Practiced his doorstep wave in the mirror. Yet as he flicks the switch in the Cabinet Room he could find…nothing.

I like to think Keir will have made off with every lightbulb in Downing Street, leaving his heir to govern by the ghostly glow of his own mobile phone.

But the lightbulbs are a mere amuse-bouche, the true horror lies not in the darkened corridors but in those miserable ledgers.

Behold the defence investment plan: late and lacklustre. A scheme that arrived as punctually as a rail replacement bus, and bizarrely with less firepower.

It was this wretched wheeze that saw ministers resign in disgust and blew a £5billion crater clean through the nation’s finances.

And now the bill slaps down with a thud, squarely on the desk of the new man.

Congratulations on the promotion, Mr Burnham, do mind the crater.

Because this is the leaving present no amount of rearranged furniture can rival.

Not a rewired thermostat but a defence policy in tatters.

Not a missing stapler but billions to conjure from thin air, with the Kremlin watching and the Treasury in bits.

Sir Keir, meanwhile, will be long gone, yapping to the resignation speech circuit and chuckling at the darkness he left behind.

The oldest office prank in the book but he just played it on the entire country.