Monday
There has been no shortage of reaction to Donald Trump’s election as next US president, though my own thinkpiece on “How do I explain the result to my dog?” has inexplicably so far failed to appear in print. I’m sure the comment editor is just waiting for the right slot to become available. The New York Times has come up with the most radical plan for dealing with the political shock: ignore it wherever possible. On Monday the newspaper devoted just a couple of paragraphs to the orange billionaire, in the top right-hand corner of its front page. Its two lead picture stories were about Yemen and … Canada’s gay curling league. As it’s hard to think of three things things more likely to wind up the American alt-right than Canada, gay people and curling, this must be one of the most passive-aggressive front pages in newspaper history. The fightback starts here.
Tuesday
Never overestimate how much the average American knows of the outside world. This week three partners from a Washington-based PR firm, Mercury, who all had strong links to the Republican and Democratic parties, came over to London to share their thoughts on Trump’s victory and what it meant for Britain. Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman, said that he, and probably most people in the US, knew more about Nigel Farage than Theresa May. “I think most Americans would still say David Cameron was prime minister,” he said, before adding “or Margaret Thatcher”. This could help to explain why Nigel got the VIP treatment at Trump Towers while Theresa was only the 10th world leader – behind those of Egypt, Ireland, Mexico, Israel, Turkey, India, Japan, Australia and South Korea – to get a phone call from the president-elect. The special relationship is already looking even less special.
Wednesday
Prime minister’s questions appears to have lost some of its allure for MPs in recent months. Even when it was only David Cameron and Ed Miliband – hardly parliamentary titans – going head to head, there used to be standing room only in the House of Commons. But there are far fewer takers these days and gaps can regularly be found on the green benches. It’s probably because no one can bear the kind of excruciating exchange that took place between the Conservative backbencher Richard Bacon and May this week. When Bacon, in a try-hard reference to Trump’s election, wondered if there was any hope for the overweight, middle-aged, left-behind white male in this country, he was invited by the prime minister to “come up and see me some time”. Too much information. No wonder those MPs who do still bother to turn up for PMQs spend far more time following their own Twitter feeds – it’s the only way many of them know they are still alive – than listening to what’s going on.
Thursday
Having raced through The Crown in less than a week, I’m left with a lingering sense of regret. Regret that I will have to wait another year for the next 10 episodes of the Netflix series, and regret for my own life. There’s something particularly melancholic about seeing events that were part of your own past being repackaged into popular history for the vast majority of viewers. I felt much the same way when we went down to see my son in his Brighton student house for his 21st birthday last weekend. As we froze to death eating curry off a table knocked up out of a few pallets and an old door, I remembered being a student myself and having to instruct my housemates to be on their best behaviour on the rare occasions when my parents were allowed to visit. I couldn’t help thinking that much the same applied here and that, for my son, the real fun would start when we left. As David Cameron said in a sign-off to his last PMQs, I was the future once.
Friday
The case of the 14-year-old girl who won the right to have her body cryogenically frozen raises the philosophical question of whether there are fates worse than death. For me, the real worry about handing over £37,000 to have my corpse deep-frozen wouldn’t be that the process might not work, but rather that it would. The attractions of eternal life are rather dimmed by the prospect of coming round to discover that my children were either now older than me or, more likely, dead. Imagine how awful it would be to wake up into a world that was almost unrecognisable and find yourself having to make small talk to a bunch of people you didn’t know. One of the few compensations of getting old is that you’ve already made most of the friends you’ll ever need and can cherrypick any new ones more carefully.
Digested week, digested: Post-truth Britain.
