The Right Dishonourable

“The right man in the wrong place can make all the difference in the world.” The remark by the mysterious G-Man sets off the classic noughties video game Half Life 2, after which the suited stranger remain an elusive presence, presumably pulling strings as the player navigates through the dystopian rubble.

The image of the puppetmaster bureaucrat returned to me with the departure of Dominic Cummings from Downing Street yesterday night, following a week of media controversy about comms director Lee Cain, an ally. The official line is that Cummings will continue to work from home, although how receptive his colleagues will be to the dead man sitting is unclear.

What with being put under partial house arrest for the second time this year, I must confess to having missed the Remembrance Day commemorations. The Sunday came and went without much notice, and even the 11th passed unmarked in my household.

This time of year is traditionally dominated by discussion over red poppies, in which rightwing newspapers bemoan a lack of poppy wearing and their leftwing rivals bemoan the bemoaning, or dispute the cause of the bemoaning, or worry that the whole thing is too jingoistic anyway.

Joe Biden’s victory in the American presidential election, like every one before it, closes a chapter in his country’s history. Donald Trump may have been the leader of the free world, but he won’t be for much longer, so maybe we can all move on.

That will be the view of observers who see the ‘populism’ of the last few years as a scare rather than a prognosis. Any election that put a deplorable into office or mandated an unwelcome policy change was an unfortunate but temporary setback, soon to be reversed by demographic change as old bigots die and the country becomes less white.