Mary Wakefield is married to Dominic Cummings, the PM’s former Civil Service syther. In late April 2020, she wrote and presented her Thought for Today on Radio 4’s eponymous flagship news programme.

Rather than elevating listeners’ minds to matters noumenal, the content pertained to praise of her magnificent and much maligned husband in what seemed a pre-emptive strike at subsequent complaints that howled through serious media on his oversight-testing, 30-mile drive to Barnard Castle.

Listening to it made one consider if a parallel universe had materialized for its 3 1/2 minute duration. The BBC said it was giving “the strand an occasion injection of personal covid stories”.

Having failed to right his wrong at the infamous Rose Garden press briefing in May 2020, Mr Cummings has recently attempted to justify his actions by virtue of criticising those around him at the time. Most puzzling.

What has any of this to do with emotional intelligence, mental health resilience or kindness? we hear you wail.

Well, in virtue of the gathering of the Globe’s seven, leading decision makers in St Ives at the weekend to thresh empathic wheat from political chaff, we send supportive wishes to help thoughtful Leaders drive events in a different, clear-sighted direction. It seems these islands stand in peril of writing themselves out of history if national institutions can be bullied into bewildered acceptance of wrongness.

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