The Tempest Over Westminster

If, as expected, Andy Burnham becomes our next Prime Minster, perhaps his premiership will one day be seen through the lens of last night’s storm.

Written by C.Huxley for Catholic Unscripted

The English are notoriously preoccupied with the weather. Our unpredictable weather patterns often serve as a source of polite, uncontentious conversation. Usually, it is mild, offering us the opportunity to recount self-deprecating tales of getting drenched by an unexpected downpour or getting horribly sunburnt because we forgot that such things can happen in England. Plus ça change!

Occasionally, weather-talk has more potency. Last night, a vast and spectacular thunderstorm swept across large parts of the island of Great Britain, bringing house fires started by lightning strikes and flash flooding. It was weather we might describe as Biblical. This raises an interesting question. Why is it, in the era of modern meteorology, that people instinctively look for meaning in the weather, especially when it coincides with momentous events in our temporal lives?

In Medieval times, people often over-interpreted weather and celestial events. Halley’s comet is memorialised in the Bayeux tapestry’s telling of the defeat of the Anglo-Saxons at the Battle of Hastings. Chroniclers interpreted the eclipse on the night Richard III’s wife died in 1485 as an ill omen of his impending doom.