The Right Dishonourable

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.

Rory Stewart has seemed quiet since he stood down his campaign to become London mayor. The former Conservative leadership contender – and, by implication, prime ministerial contender – had argued that an independent run would be unfair on volunteers after the election was delayed a year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Judging by an interview with PoliticsJOE, Stewart has been occupying himself with a trip to Afghanistan, a country he has a long history with. And he’s also written a few choice words about his former leadership rival Boris Johnson, in a Times Literary Supplement review of Tom Bower’s latest biography.

Since Tuesday I’ve spent hours every day refreshing pages. The New York Times, for the potential progressive meltdown. FiveThirtyEight, for its smug vindication. And of course the BBC, which is ‘projecting’ the final outcome of the US presidential election just as everyone else does.

British politicos’ infatuation with American politics is well documented. Other than the homeland, it is the country we cover most on our podcast, and plenty of political nerds here follow events stateside compulsively. Washington can’t fart without London sniffing.