No, I Didn’t Watch It
Reporting live from somewhere else entirely
Mind you, if That Nice Mr Biden had wiped the floor with Rump at their debate last week, we’d all be relaxing. As it is (looking for a bright side), at least every Democrat in the Union will be up and voting come November.
There was mild panic in my local newsagent in Falmouth (UK) yesterday morning, as well.
The small company of elderly men who turn up for their paper and their cigarettes on a Saturday morning and then linger for a chat — they haven’t forgotten that when Rump came over, he held the hand of our then-Prime Minister, Theresa May.
“He didn’t get the Queen though, did he?”
No, he didn’t.
We talked about Rishi Sunak launching this present UK general election in a rainstorm without an umbrella, and then going off to make a speech at the shipyard where the Titanic was built.
Nobody in that company has referred to Rishi as “prime minister” since he left the D-Day commemoration early.
Then we went back to talking about Young Joe, and agreed that none of us would have felt able to lead the free world at that age, even with the free newspapers and all the coffee.
I got home, made my own coffee — the machine in the newsagent is fine to gather round, but I’ve never tried its coffee — and sat down in my comfortable armchair to read the paper.
Ah, yes. This is more like it.
Front-page second-lead story in the final Weekend FT before the UK general election is: His Majesty’s Treasury has been consulting on plans to redecorate the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s private bathroom.
I’m home.
In fairness, the Chancellor’s bathroom is designed for boys, apparently, and the next Chancellor is likely to be a girl. The Treasury is neutral: is it political to address that issue?
If you watch that clip of Rishi getting wet, listen for D:Ream’s Things Can Only Get Better in the background. That was Labour’s 1997 election-campaign anthem. Sometimes, methinks, Fate lays it on a bit too thick.
