I AGREE with Rishi Sunak on one thing: chess should be taught in schools. With everything going on in the classroom these days — lack of resources, lack of teachers, lack of time to learn rather than be taught to pass an exam — you’d be forgiven if you didn’t see it as much of a priority.

It’s a great leveller though. Whether you are rich, poor, man, woman, old or young it doesn’t count for much when the game begins. Well, not quite. There is one concession to the world — white begins with privilege.

At primary school in Saltcoats, there was a local man who would turn up one lunchtime a week, rain or shine on his bicycle to teach us primary sevens chess. Mr Tumelty ate his jam sandwiches offering gentle advice as we competed for position on the chess ladder. Some were more interested than others, but we all had a go, and a couple of us even played in a few competitions as a result.

It begins with a headlong rush across the board, progresses through an obsession with the Queen to the detriment of all else, to eventually an understanding that there’s a reason every single piece and pawn have a place on that board.

“In the endgame, the pawn is a mighty piece,” he said.

I’ve continued to play — even if my development has been arrested — for food, for fun, in pubs, even nightclubs; a common language when the spoken word cannot carry.

Whoever and wherever you are though, time defines the game, even without a clock. Time is measured in the move, and the privilege that white has is borne of making the first.

The game within the game is to extend or gain that privilege, to gain time, to gain a tempo.

Divert the opponent into defending something while you move forward with your plans, force them to waste time on your terms.

Back in the real world, this would be just called setting the agenda, and some are better at it than others.

The “centrists” are theoretically running the show across Britain. With few exceptions, from town hall to Parliament the “tough choices” brigade rules the roost. They hold the key to the centre ground from which all elections are won, you see. That’s what we’re told.

From this lofty position, they can nod sagely at the “legitimate concerns” over people looking to start a new life here, argue that the person with a disability must be forced into penury to satisfy the whims of a bond trader who doesn’t exist, and insist that tens of thousands of children must see their parents reliant on charity food parcels to satisfy a fiscal rule made up on the spot.

Political “conviction” confected from the focus group. It’s clear that joining a mainstream political party these days is of little use in terms of forming policy — the focus group is the new entryism, and boy has it been effective.

With the kind of pretensions to moral superiority which have successfully strangled electoral politics in Scotland, First Minister John Swinney will at the end of this month host a summit of “civic Scotland” and leaders of political parties to counter the threat of “populism” — read Reform UK Ltd.

A case of “something must be done … this is something, do it.”

Presumably, Swinney squeezed in a visit to an irony-bypass clinic on his recent fool’s errand to the US to plead for foreign direct investment. This is a man and party who routinely use phrases like “those are the values of the Scottish National Party, they are the values of Scotland,” and whose cosy wee get-together will only play to one of the many prejudices held by the faux anti-Establishment Reform UK Ltd.

This beautifully set up Glasgow Reform UK Ltd councillor Thomas Kerr (no relation) to tell anyone who would listen that his new party believed in “open debate, not stitch-up consensus.”

A tempo lost.

Also in the US last week was Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar. As the leader of Scotland’s third-placed party, and staring down the barrel of a four-way tie for a distant second in next year’s Holyrood election with Reform, Tories, Greens and Liberals, this would seem like an opportune time for him to set out a distinctive stall.

Well, hawking “brand Scotland” alongside British trade minister and Blair Cabinet veteran Douglas Alexander didn’t quite do that; he instead wrote a column calling for Trump’s Scottish roots to be leveraged to attract investment.

Swinney at least didn’t say the quiet bit out loud.

Another tempo lost.

To Swinney’s credit, he has not adopted the anti-immigrant rhetoric of British Labour and Tory leaders. Labour has spent a great deal of their time in government thus far busily triangulating towards Farage, and trying to out-tough Tories by kicking people with nothing in order to appeal to people who will never vote for them.

Another tempo lost, see a pattern?

This week we hear that ministers are actively considering nationalisation of British Steel. Good news, but why has a government content to see Port Talbot die suddenly had a change of heart?

Was it recognition that Reform UK Ltd are thriving on the abandonment of those workers, has the Prime Minister realised his great vision of a war economy cannot be made flesh without steel; or maybe he plans to abuse his position and commission a spine?

Even now, ministers whisper the n-word apologetically, while a millionaire stock-broker who would privatise the NHS turns up in Scunthorpe to pose with workers and demand nationalisation.

A tempo lost.

From welfare to warfare, immigration to nationalisation, the far-right noticed long ago that the politicians who stand for nothing will fall for anything. A nudge here, a nudge there, and every time met with an accommodation.

When push comes to shove — and it may well come to a great deal more than that — the political leadership of these islands no longer know how to set an agenda. They’d rather put civil servants on the dole than challenge the orthodoxies, because they see themselves as the managers not makers of political weather.

“The new National government, as it has called itself, enters the House, not as a great, stalwart defender of the nation as it describes itself, but as the miserable hireling, the kept person of the banking interests of this country; and it enters on the clear understanding that finance and its high priests only tolerate it if it is prepared to take the milk out of the bottle of the unemployed man’s baby.

“Britain, which with all its advantages ought to be leading the world to progress, is to-day under a Socialist [sic] Prime Minister leading the world to reaction.”

Words directed at Ramsay MacDonald by Jimmy Maxton in 1931 sound all too familiar today. As MacDonald found, the great trick of the Establishment is to dazzle with baubles, to flatter the ego by making the unpalatable into a test of political virility, to dictate the questions allowing you to find their answers.

We could comfort ourselves with Mr Tumelty’s words “in the endgame, the pawn is a mighty piece,” but some games of chess never make it that far.

In the space of a few moves the best-laid plans can unravel, leaving the defeated in shock when they realise the plan wasn’t theirs at all.

Every time the far-right win a tempo, we step closer to that collapse.

It’s not a game though, and every day that the needs, wants, and aspirations of working people go unmet is a tragedy. Socialists must now set aside egos, sectarian differences, organise, and — most importantly — do.

The “white knight” isn’t up to the job, and a king never won anything, but we can.