Opposition leaders are seen cycling to work and rhapsodising about “quality of life” as opposed to raw growth. Foreign secretaries prioritise urgent action to combat climate change. The slow movement has been pushed from the sidelines (where it was daydreaming quite happily) into the main arena. It was a change I first noticed 18 months ago: it was February 2006 and Clare Short was addressing the United Nations Social Development Commission, and, in the midst of the expected discourse about sustainable, or unsustainable, development, I heard the former UK secretary of state for international development say that people should spend more time reading poetry, playing and listening to music and being with their friends. Hold on a minute, I thought: this is the kind of thing I say, not the kind of thing a cabinet minister, even an ex-cabinet minister, says.

Clare Short’s conversion to the slow movement seemed to have a lot to do with the build-up of evidence about global warming and the realisation that (as Short put it) if China were to continue growing at 10 per cent per annum it would be consuming all the world’s oil, paper and many other commodities besides by the year 2030.