Monday

It’s often said that all political careers end in failure. Increasingly, many seem to also start in it. But few leaders can have suffered as big a fall from grace as Aung San Suu Kyi who was kept under house arrest by the military for 15 years between 1989 and 2010 for her attempts to bring democracy to Myanmar. In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel peace prize and she became a global icon for bringing power to the powerless through non-violent protest. For years, she was one of my political icons, up there with Nelson Mandela, as an unequivocal force for good in the world.

Now, just three years after she became Myanmar’s de facto leader, she finds herself in the dock at the international court of justice facing charges that her government was complicit in the genocide of Rohingya Muslims. So far, she has looked anything but repentant. She has described several of her generals as “rather sweet” and has merely shrugged that some soldiers might have used a little more force than required. Like execution squads and burning babies. Her defence lawyer doesn’t appear to be helping much by suggesting that merely killing 100,000 or so doesn’t really count as genocide. More as recreational murder.

I find myself increasingly wondering whether Aung San Suu Kyi was always like this and the rest of the world was just conned. Or if power has corrupted her so totally that the ends always justify the means.

Tuesday

The Bookseller has published a list of the bestselling books of the decade and EL James’s Fifty Shades trilogy has scooped the top three places. Perhaps this might be one of the reasons the country has fallen apart. I regret to confess that I am among the millions of people who read the books, though in my defence I was doing so for work.

It’s more than a year since I stopped writing the digested read but here’s a PG flavour – the X-rated version is still online – of what all those who haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey have missed:

Submit yourself to the greatest thrashing of your life, my inner goddess says, to prove how much you love him and to let him show how much he loves you. “I love you, yet I have to go,” I sob. “Why?” Because we’re only going to get to the bottom of your commitment issues after you’ve spanked your way through the next two books.

For rather more fun Christmas reading, I can recommend instead Stuart Heritage’s Bedtime Stories for Worried Liberals and Sam Leith’s Our Times in Rhymes. And rather more niche, for cricket lovers, the Nightwatchman magazine has just published a collection of its best writing over the last five years. Plenty of authors in there whose names you will know. Possibly even mine.

Wednesday

I’ve taken so many train journeys all over the country to see party leaders give the same dismal speech that my phone has started nagging me if I haven’t been anywhere for days. “Come on, you know you enjoyed your day trip to Hull to see Nigel Farage, why don’t you nip down to Bristol to hear Jeremy Corbyn?” So I did and rather regretted it because I got a torrent of abuse from Labour supporters for saying Corbyn didn’t appear to be connecting with people as he had in 2017. Reminder: I’m a sketchwriter not a cheerleader.

The final day of the grimmest campaign I can remember started with Boris Johnson hiding inside a fridge to avoid being interviewed. Then maybe the fridge was a mobile sperm bank and the Great Impregnator was merely preparing himself for the great shagathon that he had told the Sunday Times would inevitably follow the UK leaving the EU on 31 January.

Johnson’s final rally was at the Olympic Park in London – it’s amazing how politicians invariably return to the scenes of their crimes: the stadium ran massively over budget and is still costing the taxpayer £20m a year thanks to the hopeless deal he negotiated with West Ham. The event ended on a downbeat note with a knackered-looking Johnson merely repeating a selection of his favourite lies. There wasn’t a soul in the country who didn’t sigh with relief when the campaign came to a close.

Thursday

This wasn’t an election that offered the most appetising of choices. The Islamophobe, racist and homophobe versus the man who had done next to nothing to fight antisemitism in the Labour party. The proven liar who says he will “get Brexit done” when he knows he won’t versus the Labour leader who can’t commit to supporting a particular side in a second referendum. Or the Lib Dems who don’t stand a prayer in my constituency.

I felt both grubby and disenfranchised as I cast my vote. My sense of futility is now approaching an all-time high. When I stopped taking drugs in early 1987, I used to regularly joke with friends that I would definitely start again when I hit the age of 60. Because even staying clean for a day felt like a miracle and 30 years was just unthinkable. When I reached 60, I had to do something of a rethink. My life – apart from the being me bit – was actually quite nice and it seemed a shame to risk screwing everything up again.

So now I’ve reset my relapse for 80 because I will hopefully be still young enough to still enjoy it but old enough not to inflict too much damage on anyone else. Two friends have already confirmed their attendance for my 80th birthday party.

Friday

There were gasps in the ITV spin room when the exit polls were announced. No one – not even the most optimistic Tories – had reckoned on them getting a landslide majority. The rest of the night became a punishment beating for everyone in the Labour party. Apart from Corbyn, who was smiling and waving as he arrived for his count and gave an acceptance speech in which he couldn’t think of anything he could possibly have done better. It was all the country’s and the media’s fault that he hadn’t won. This has been a dismal campaign: not so much an election as an unpopularity contest that has been won hands down by Corbyn. Everyone knows Boris is a liar and will let them down, but they just don’t care. On a personal level, the last week has been gruesome as my daughter and her husband have been over for a week long pre-Christmas visit from the US and I have hardly had a moment to spend time with them. Boris has a lot to answer for. But not even the election is going to spoil this evening for me. Nearly 40 years ago, I went by accident – my mum was ill and there was a spare ticket going – to my first opera. It was Verdi’s Otello at the Royal Opera House and I was hooked from the opening chords. I have been passionate about opera ever since. Tonight, my wife and I are taking my daughter to see the same opera in the same opera house, with the exquisite Ermonela Jaho singing Desdemona. It will almost certainly mean far more to me than it does to Anna, but I’m really not bothered. After six weeks of the grubbiest politics, for an evening at least I will be back with those I love and touched by beauty.

Digested week, digested: The horror! The horror!

John Crace’s new book, Decline and Fail: Read in Case of Political Apocalypse, is published by Guardian Faber. To order a copy go to guardianbookshop.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £15, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.